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1 



SESAME AND LILIES. 



THREE LECTURES BY 

JOHN RUSKIN, LLD. 



I. OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 

2. OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 

3. OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE 



Revised and Enlarged Edition. 



NEW YORK: 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
46 East Fourteenth Street. 



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PREFACE, 



I. Being now fifty-one years old, and little likely 
to change my mind hereafter on any important sub- 
ject of thought (unless through weakness of age), I 
wish to publish a connected series of such parts of 
my works as now seem to me right, and likely to be 
of permanent use. In doing so I shall omit much, 
but not attempt to mend what I think worth reprint- 
ing. A young man necessarily writes otherwise than 
an old one, and it would be worse than wasted time 
to try to recast the juvenile language : nor is it to be 
thought that I am ashamed even of what I cancel ; 
for great part of my earlier work was rapidly written 
for temporary purposes, and is now unnecessary, 
though true, even to truism. What I wrote about 
religion, was, on the contrary, painstaking, and I 
think, forcible, as compared with most religious 
writing ; especially in its frankness and fearlessness : 
but it was wholly mistaken ; for I had been educated 
in the doctrines of a narrow sect, and had read his- 
tory as obliquely as sectarians necessarily must. 

Mingled among these either unnecessary or errone- 
ous statements, I find, indeed, some that might be 
still of value ; but these, in my earlier books, disfig- 
ured by affected language, partly through the desire 



4 PREFACE. 

to be thought a fine writer, and partly, as in the 
second volume of " Modern Painters," in the notion of 
returning as far as I could to what I thought the bet- 
ter style of old English literature, especially to that 
of my then favorite, in prose, Richard Hooker. 

II. For these reasons, though, as respects either art, 
policy, or morality as distinct from religion, I not only 
still hold, but would even wish strongly to reaffirm 
the substance of what I said in my earliest books, 
I shall reprint scarcely anything in this series out of 
the first and second volumes of " Modern Painters ; "" 
and shall omit much of the "Seven Lamps "anc. 
" Stones of Venice : " but all my books written within 
the last fifteen years will be republished without 
change, as new editions of them are called for, with 
here and there perhaps an additional note, and hav- 
ing their text divided, for convenient reference, into 
paragraphs consecutive through each volume. I 
shall also throw together the shorter fragments 
that bear on each other, and fill in with such un- 
printed lectures or studies as seem to me worth 
preserving, so as to keep the volumes, on an average, 
composed of about a hundred leaves each. 

III. The first book of which a new edition is re- 
quired chances to be " Sesame and Lilies," from which 
I now detach the old preface, about the Alps, for use 
elsewhere ; and to which I add a lecture given in 
Ireland on a subject closely connected with that of 
the book itself. I am glad that it should be the first 
of the complete series, for many reasons ; though in 
now looking over these two lectures, I am painfully 
struck by the waste of good work in them. They 



PREFACE. 5 

cost me much thought, and much strong emotion ; 
but it was fooHsh to suppose that I could rouse my 
audiences in a little while to any sympathy with the 
temper into which I had brought myself by years of 
thinking over subjects full of pain ; while, if I missed 
my purpose at the time, it was little to be hoped I 
could attain it afterwards ; since phrases written for 
oral delivery become ineffective when quietly read. 
Yet I should only take away what good is in them if 
I tried to translate them into the language of books ; 
nor, indeed, could I at all have done so at the time 
of their delivery, my thoughts then habitually and 
impatiently putting themselves into forms fit only for 
emphatic speech : and thus I am startled, in my 
review of them, to find that, though there is much 
(forgive me the impertinence) which seems to me 
accurately and energetically said, there is scarcely an)^- 
thing put in a form to be generally convincing, or even 
easily intelligible : and I can well imagine a reader 
laying down the book without being at all moved by 
it, still less guided, to any definite course of action. 

I think, however, if I now say briefly and clearly 
what I meant my hearers to understand, and what I 
wanted, and still would fain have, them to do, there 
may afterwards be found some better service in the 
passionately written text. 

IV. The first Lecture says, or tries to say, that, 
life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, 
we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless 
books ; and that valuable books should, in a civilized 
country, be within the reach of every one, printed in 
excellent form, for a just price ; but not in any vile. 



6 PREFACE, 

vulgar, or, by reason of smallness of type, physically 
injurious form, at a vile price. For we none of us 
need many books, and those which we need ought to 
be clearly printed, on the best paper, and strongly 
bound. And though we are, indeed, now a wretched 
and poverty-struck nation, and hardly able to keep soul 
and body together, still, as no person in decent cir- 
cumstances would put on his table confessedly bad 
wine, or bad meat, without being ashamed, so he 
need not have on his shelves ill-printed or loosely 
and wretchedly-stitched books ; for, though few can 
be rich, yet every man who honestly exerts himself 
may, I think, still provide, for himself and his family, 
good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart 
or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for his 
books. And I would urge upon every young man, 
as the beginning of his due and wise provision for 
his household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the 
severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and 
steadily — however slowly — increasing, series of 
books for use through life ; making his little library^ 
of all the furniture in his room, the most studied and 
decorative piece ; every volume having its assigned 
place, like a little statue in its niche, and one of the 
earliest and strictest lessons to the children of the 
house being how to turn the pages of their ov/n liter- 
ary possessions lightly and deliberately, with no 
chance of tearing or dogs^ ears. 

V. That is my notion of the founding of Kings' 
Treasuries ; and the first Lecture is intended to show 
somewhat the use and preciousness of their treasures : 
but the two following ones have wider scope, being 



PREFACE, 7 

written in the hope of awakening the youth of Eng- 
land, so far as my poor words might have any power 
with them, to take some thought of the purposes of 
the life into which they are entering, and the nature 
of the world they have to conquer. 

VI. These two lectures are fragmentary and ill- 
arranged, but not, I think, diffuse or much compres- 
sible. The entire gist and conclusion of them, 
however, is in the last six paragraphs, 135 to the end, 
of the third lecture, which I would beg the reader to 
look over not once nor twice (rather than any other 
part of the book), for they contain the best expres- 
sion I have yet been able to put in words of what, so 
far as is within my power, I mean henceforward both 
to do myself, and to plead with all over whom I have 
any influence, to do also according to their means : 
the letters begun on the first day of this year, to the 
workmen of England, having the object of originat- 
ing, if possible, this movement among them, in true 
alliance with whatever trustworthy element of help 
they can find in the higher classes. After these 
paragraphs, let me ask you to read, by the fiery light 
of recent events, the fable at p. 161 (§ 117), and 
then §§ 129 — 131; and observe, my statement 
respecting the famine at Orissa is not rhetorical, but 
certified by official documents as within the truth. 
Five hundred thousand persons, at least, died by 
starvation in our British dominions, wholly in conse- 
quence of carelessness and want of forethought. 
Keep that well in your memory ; and note it as the 
best possible illustration of modern political economy 
in true practice, and of the relations it has accom- 



1 



8 PREFACE, 

plished between Supply and Demand. Then begin 
the second lecture, and all will read clear enough, I 
think, to the end ; only, since that second lecture was 
WTitten, questions have arisen respecting the educa- 
tion and claims of women which have greatly troubled 
simple minds and excited restless ones. I am some- 
times asked my thoughts on this matter, and I sup- 
pose that some girl readers of the second lecture may 
at the end of it desire to be told summarily what I 
would have them do and desire in the present state 
of things. This, then, is what I would say to any 
girl who had confidence enough in me to believe 
what I told her, or do what I ask her. 

VII. First, be quite sure of one thing, that, how- 
ever much you may know, and whatever advantages 
you may possess, and however good you may be, you 
have not been singled out, by the God who made 
you, from all the other girls in the world, to be espe- 
cially informed respecting His own nature and 
character. You have not been born in a luminous 
point upon the surface of the globe, where a perfect 
theology might be expounded to you from your youth 
up, and where everything you were taught would be 
true, and everything that was enforced upon you, 
right. Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions 
that by any chance could enter and hold your empty 
little heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, — that 
you have been so much the darling of the Heavens, 
and favorite of the Fates, as to be born in the very 
nick of time, and in the punctual place, when and 
where pure Divine truth had been sifted from the 
errors of the Nations ; and that your papa had been 



PREFACE. 9 

providentially disposed to buy a house in the conven- 
ient neighborhood of the steeple under which that 
Immaculate and final verity would be beautifully 
proclaimed. Do not think it, child; it is not so. 
This, on the contrary, is the fact, — unpleasant you 
may think it; pleasant, it seems to 7ne, — that you, 
with all your pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and 
kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are not one 
whit more thought of or loved by the great Maker 
and Master than any poor little red, black, or blue 
savage, running wild in the pestilent woods, or naked 
on tfle hot sands of the earth : and that, of the two, 
you probably know less about God than she does ; 
the only difference being that she thinks little of 
Him that is right, and you, much that is wrong. 

That, then, is the first thing to make sure of; — 
that you are not yet perfectly well informed on the 
most abstruse of all possible subjects, and that, if 

you care to behave with modesty or propriety, you . 

had better be silent about it. 

VIII. The second thing which you may make sure 
of is, that however good you may be, you have 
faults ; that however dull you may be, you can find 
out what some of them are ; and that however slight 
they may be, you had better make some — not too 
painful, but patient — effort to get quit of them. 
And so far as you have confidence in me at all, trust 
me for this, that how many soever you may find or 
fancy your faults to be, there are only two that are of 
real consequence, — Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps \ 
you may be proud. Well, we can get much good 
out of pride, if only it be not religious. Perhaps 



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10 PREFACE, 

you may be vain : it is highly probable ; and very 
pleasant for the people who like to praise you. Per- 
haps you are a little envious : that is really very 
shocking; but then — s o is e verybody. else. Perhaps, 
also, you are a little malicious, which I am truly con- 
cerned to hear, but should probably only the more, if 
I knew you, enjoy your conversation. But whatever 
else you may be, you must not be useless, and you 
must not be cruel. If there is any one point which, 
in six thousand years of thinking about right and 
wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or 
successively by experience discovered, it is that 'God 
dislikes idle and cruel people more than any others ; 
— that His first order is, *'Work while you have 
light;" and His second, "Be merciful while you 
have mercy." 

*'Work while you have light," especially while 
you have the light of morning. There are few things 
more wonderful to me than that old people never tell 
young ones how precious their youth is. They 
sometimes sentimentally regret their own earlier 
days ; sometimes prudently forget them ; often fool- 
ishly rebuke the young, often more foolishly indulge, 
often most foolishly thwart and restrain, but scarcely 
ever warn or watch them. Remember, then, that I, 
at least, have warned/^//, that the happiness of your 
life, and its power, and its part and rank in earth or 
in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days 
now. They are not to be sad days ; far from that, 
the first duty of young people is to be delighted and 
delightful ; but they are to be in the deepest sense 
solemn days. There is no solemnity so deep, to a 



PREFACE. II 

rightly-thinking creature, as that of dawn. But not 
only in that beautiful sense, but in all their character 
and method, they are to be solemn days. Take 
your Latin dictionary, and look out *' sollennis," and 
fix the sense of the word well in your mind, and 
remember that every day of your early life is ordain- 
ing irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and 
practice of your soul ; ordaining either sacred cus- 
toms of dear and lovely recurrence, or trenching 
deeper and deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow. 
Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you'H 
do not make yourself a somewhat better creaturej_; 
and in order to do that, find out, first, what you are 
now. Do not think vaguely about it ; take pen and 
paper, and write down as accurate a description of 
yourself as you can, with the date to it. If you dare 
not do so, find out why you dare not, and try to get 
strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly in the 
face, in mind as well as body. I do not doubt but 
that the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than 
the face, and for that very reason it needs more look- 
ing at ; so always have two mirrors on your toilet 
table, and see that with proper care you dress body 
and mind before them daily. After the dressing is 
once over for the day, think no more about it : as 
your hair will blow about your ears, so your temper 
and thoughts will get ruffled with the day^s work, and 
may need, sometimes, twice dressing; but I don't 
want you to carry about a mental pocket-comb ; only 
to be smooth braided always in the morning. 

IX. Write down then, frankly, what you are, or, 
at least, what you think yourself, not dwelling upon 



12 PREFACE, 

those inevitable faults which I have just told you are 
of little consequence, and which tlie action of a right 
life will shake or smooth away ; but that you may 
determine to the best of your intelligence what you 
are good for, and can be made into. You will find 
that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the hon- 
est desire to help other people, will, in the quickest 
and delicatest ways, improve yourself. Thus, from 
the beginning, consider all your accomplishments as 
means of assistance to others ; read attentively, in 
this volume, paragraphs 74, 75, 19, and 79, and you 
will understand what I mean, with respect to lan- 
guages and music. In music especially you will soon 
find what personal benefit there is in being servicea- 
ble : it is probable that, however limited your powers, 
you have voice and ear enough to sustain a note of 
moderate compass in a concerted piece ; — that, then, 
is the first thing to make sure you can do. Get your 
voice disciplined and clear, and think only of accu- 
racy ; never of eiTect or expression : if you have any 
soul worth expressing it will show itself in your sing- 
ing; but most likely there are very few feelings in 
you, at present, needing any particular expression ; 
and the one thing you have to do is to make a clear- 
voiced little instrument of yourself, which other 
people can entirely depend upon for the note wanted. 
So, in drawing, as soon as you can set down the 
right shape of anything, and thereby explain its char- 
acter to another person, or make the look of it clear 
and interesting to a child, you will begin to enjoy the 
art vividly for its own sake, and all your habits of 
mind and powers of memory will gain precision : but 



PREFACE. 13 

if you only try to make showy drawings for praise, or \ 
pretty ones for amusement, your drawing will have 
little or no real interest for you, and no educational 
power whatever. 

Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve to 
do every day some that is useful in the vulgar sense. \ 
Learn first thoroughly the economy of the kitchen ; 
the good and bad qualities of every common article 
of food, and the simplest and best modes of their • 
preparation : when you have time, go and help in the 
cooking of poorer families, and show them how to 
make as much of everything as possible, and how 
to make little, nice : coaxing and tempting them into 
tidy and pretty ways, and pleading for well-folded ^ 
table-cloths, however coarse, and for a flower or two 
out of the garden to strew on them. If you manage 
to get a clean table-cloth, bright plates on it, and a 
good dish in the middle, of your own cooking, you may 
ask leave to say a short grace ; and let your religious 
ministries be confined to that much for the present. 

X. Again, let a certain part of your day (as little 
as you choose, but not to be broken in upon) be set 
apart for making string and pretty dresses for the 
poor. Learn the sound qualities of all useful stuffs, 
and make everything of the best you can get, what- 
ever its price. I have many reasons for desiring you 
to do this — too many to be told just now, — trust 
me, and be sure you get everything as good as can 
be : and if, in the villanous state of modern trade, 
you cannot get it good at any price, buy its raw 
material, and set some of the poor women about you 
to spin and weave, till you have got stuff that can be 



14 PREFACE, 

trusted: and then, every day, make some little piece 
I of useful clothing, sewn with your own fingers as 
' strongly as it can be stitched ; and embroider it or 
otherwise beautify it moderately with fine needlework, 
such as a girl may be proud of having done. And 
accumulate these things by you until you hear of 
some honest persons in need of clothing, which may 
often too sorrowfully be ; and, even though you 
^*- should be deceived, and give them to the dishonest, 
and hear of their being at once taken to the pawn- 
broker's, never mind that, for the pawnbroker must 
sell them to some one who has need of them. That 
is no business of yours ; what concerns you is only 
that when you see a half-naked child, you should 
have good and fresh clothes to give it, if its parents 
will let it be taught to wear them. If they will 
not, consider how they came to be of such a mind, 
which it will be wholesome for you beyond most sub- 
jects of inquiry to ascertain. And after you have 
gone on doing this a little while, you will begin to 
understand the meaning of at least one chapter of 
your Bible, Proverbs xxxi., without need of any 
labored comment, sermon, or meditation. 

XL In these, then (and of course in all minor 
ways besides, that you can discover in your own 
household) , you must be to the best of your strength 
usefully employed during the greater part of the day, 
so that you may be able at the end of it to say, as 
proudly as any peasant, that you have not eaten the 
bread of idleness. Then, secondly, I said, you are 
not to be cruel. Perhaps you think there is no 
\ chance of your being so ; and indeed I hope it is not 



PREFACE. . IS 

likely that you should be deliberately un.kind to any 
creature ; but unless you are deliberately kind to j 
every creature, you will often be cruel to many. .J 
Cruel, partly through want of imagination (a far 
rarer and weaker faculty in women than men) , and 
yet more, at the present day, through the subtle 
encouragement of your selfishness by the religious 
doctrine that all which we now suppose to be evil will 
be brought to a good end ; doctrine practically issu- 
ing, not in less earnest efforts that the immediate 
unpleasantness may be averted from ourselves, but in 
our remaining satisfied in the contemplation of its 
ultimate objects, when it is inflicted on others. 

It is not likely that the more accurate methods of 
recent mental education will now long permit young 
people to grow up in the persuasion that, in any dan- 
ger or distress, they may expect to be themselves 
saved by the providence of God, while those around 
them are lost by His Improvidence : but they may 
be yet long restrained from rightly kind action, and 
long accustomed to endure both their own pain occa- 
sionally, and the pain of others always, with an un- 
wise patience, by misconception of the eternal and 
incurable nature of real evil. Observe, therefore, } 
carefully in this matter: there are degrees of pain, as ) 
degrees of faithfulness, which are altogether conquer- ) 
able, and which seem to be merely forms of whole- 
some trial or discipHne. Your fingers tingle when 
you go out on a frosty morning, and are all the 
warmer afterwards ; your limbs are weary with whole- 
some work, and lie down in the pleasanter rest ; you 
are tried for a little while by having to wait for some 



1 6 PREFACE. 

promised good, and it is all the sweeter when it 
comes. But you cannot carry the trial past a certain 
point. Let the cold fasten on your hand in an ex- 
treme degree, and your fingers will moulder from 
their sockets. Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter 
exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall not re- 
cover the former vigor of your frame. Let heart- 

, sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the 

V^ heart loses its life for ever. 

^ Now, the very definition of evils is in this irreme- 
diableness. It means sorrow, or sin, which end in 
death ; and assuredly, as far as we know, or can con- 
ceive, there are many conditions both of pain and 
sin which cannot but so end. Of course we are igno- 
rant and blind creatures, and we cannot know what 
seeds of good may be in present suffering, or present 
crime ; but with what we cannot know, we are not 
concerned. It is conceivable that murderers and 
liars may in some distant world be exalted into a 
higher humanity than they could have reached with- 
out homicide or falsehood ; but the contingency is 
not one by which our actions should be guided. 
There is, indeed, a better hope that the beggar, who 
lies at our gates in misery, may, within gates of pearl, 
be comforted, but the Master, whose words are our 
only authority for thinking so, never Himself in- 
flicted disease as a blessing, nor sent away the hungry 
unfed, or the wounded unhealed. 

XII. Believe me, then, the only right principle of 
action here is to consider good and evil as defined by 
our natural sense of both ; and to strive to promote 
the one, and to conquer the other, with as hearty 



PREFACE, 17 

endeavor as if there were, indeed, no other world 
than this. Above all, get quit of the absurd idea 
that Heaven will interfere to correct great errors, 
while allowing its laws to take their course in punish- 
ing small ones. jTf~you prepare a dish of food care- 
lessly, you do not expect Providence to make it 
palatable ; neither if, through years of folly, you 
misguide your own life, need you expect Divine in- 
terference to bring round everything at last for the 
best. I tell you, positively, the world is not so con- 
stituted : the consequences of great mistakes are just 
as sure as those of small ones, and the happiness of 
your whole life, and of all the lives over which you 
have power, depends as literally on your own com- 
mon sense and discretion as the excellence and order 
of the feast of a day. 

XIII. Think carefully and bravely over these 
things, and you will find them true : having found 
them so, think also carefully over your own position 
in life. I assume that you belong to the middle or 
upper classes, and that you would shrink from de- 
scending into a lower sphere. You may fancy you 
would not : nay, if you are very good, strong-hearted, 
and romantic, perhaps you really would not ; but it 
is not wrong that you should. You have then, I 
suppose, good food, pretty rooms to live in, pretty 
dresses to wear, power of obtaining every rational 
and wholesome pleasure ; you are, moreover, prob- 
ably gentle, and grateful, and in the habit of every 
day thanking God for these things. But why do 
you thank Him? Is it because, in these matters, as 
well as in your religious knowledge, you think He 



1 8 PREFACE. 

has made a favorite of you. Is the essential mean- 
ing of your thanksgiving, '* Lord, I thank thee that 
I am not as other girls are, not in that I fast twice in 
the week while they feast, but in that I feast seven times 
a week while they fest," and are you quite sure this is 
a pleasing form of thanksgiving to your Heavenly 
Father? Suppose you saw one of your own true 
earthly sisters, Lucy or Emily, cast out of your mor- 
tal father^s house, starving, helpless, heartbroken ; 
and that every morning when you went into your 
father's room, you said to him, '' How good you are, 
father, to give me what you don't give Lucy," are you 
sure that, whatever anger your parent might have 
just cause for, against your sister, he would be pleased 
by that thanksgiving, or flattered by that praise? 
Nay, are you even sure that you are so much the 
favorite : suppose that, all this while, he loves poor 
Lucy just as well as you, and is only trying you 
through her pain, and perhaps not angry with her in 
anywise, but deeply angry with you, and all the more 
for your thanksgivings ? Would it not be well that 
you should think, and earnestly too, over this stand- 
ing of yours ; and all the more if you wish to believe 
that text, which clergymen so much dislike preaching 
on, '* How hardly shall they that have riches enter 
into the Kingdom of God?" You do not believe it 
now, or you would be less complacent in your state ; 
and you cannot believe it at all, until you know that 
the Kingdom of God means ; — '' not meat and drink, 
but justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," nor 
until you know also that such joy is not by any 
means, necessarily, in going to church, or in singing 



PREFACE. 19 

hymns ; but may be joy in a dance, or joy in a jest, 
or joy in anything you have deserved to possess, or 
that you are wilhng to give ; but joy in nothing that 
separates you, as by any strange favor, from your fel- 
low-creatures, that exalts you through their degrada- 
tion, — exempts you from their toil, — or indulges you 
in time of their distress. 

XIV. Think, then, and some day, I believe, you 
will feel also, — no morbid passion of pity such as 
would turn you into a black Sister of Charity, but the 
steady fire of perpetual kindness which will make you 
a bright one. I speak in no disparagement of them ; 

I know well how good the Sisters of Charity are, and j 
how much we owe to them ; but all these professional | 
pieties (except so far as distinction or association may 
be necessary for effectiveness of work), are in their 
spirit wrong, and in practice merely plaster the sores, 
of disease that ought never have been permitted toy 
exist ; encouraging at the same time the herd of less 
excellent women in frivolity, by leading them to think 
that they must either be good up to the black stand- 
ard, or cannot be good for anything. Wear a cos- 
tume, by all means, if you like ; but let it be a 
cheerful and becoming one ; and be in your heart 
a Sister of Charity always, without either veiled or 
voluble declaration of it. 

XV. As I pause, before ending my preface — 
thinking of one or two more points that are difficult 
to write of — I find a letter in The Times, from a 
French lady, which says all I want so beautifully, that 
I will print it just as it stands : 



2 PREFACE, 

Sir, —It is often said that one example is worth many ser- 
mons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one, 
which seems to me so striking just now, that, however painful, 
I cannot help dwelling upon it ? 

It is the share, the sad and large share, that French society 
and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of indul- 
gence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its 
own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humiliation. 
If our mhiageres can be cited as an example to English house- 
wives, so, alas ! can other classes of our society be set up as an 
example— riot to be followed. 

Bitter must be the feelings of many a French woman whose 
days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end, and whose 
bills of bygone splendor lie with a heavy weight on her con- 
science, if not on her purse ! 

With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere have 
the examples given by the highest ladies in the land been fol- 
lowed but too successfully. 

Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertain- 
ments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. 
Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good breeding, 
its delicacy. More and more were monde and demi-monde 
associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in 
scandalous gossip, on racecourses, in premieres representations^ 
in imitation of each other's costumes, mobiliers and slang. 

Living beyond one's means became habitual — almost neces- 
sary—for every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, 
every one else. 

What the result of all this has been we now see in the 
wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed 
brightest and highest. 

Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country has 
incurred and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrowful when 
I see in England signs of our besetting sins appearing also. 
Paint and chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing " Anony- 
mas" by name, and reading doubtfully moral novels, are in 
themselves small offences, although not many years ago they 



PREFACE, ^ 21 

would have appeared very heinous ones, yet they are quick and 
tempting conveyances on a very dangerous high-road. 

I vs^ould that all Englishwomen knew how they are looked up 
to from abroad — what a high opinion, what honor and rever- 
ence we foreigners have for their principles, their truthfulness, 
the fresh and pure innocence of their daughters, the healthy 
youthfulness of their lovely children. 

May I illustrate this by a short example which happened 
very near me ? During the days of the emeutes of 1848, all 
the houses in Paris were being searched for arms by the 
mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the master of 
the house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Re- 
pubUcans. They were going to lay violent hands on him, when 
his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came 
bravely for^vard and assured them that no arms were con- 
cealed. " Vous etes anglaise, nous vous croyons ; les anglaises 
disent toujours la verite," was the immediate answer, and the 
rioters quietly left. 

Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjust criticism if, loving and 
admiring your country, as these lines will prove, certain new 
features strike me as painful discrepancies in English life? 

Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can 
make Hfe lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love nothing 
better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her best 
in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford, or 
your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and perfectly sitting 
their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty \sic ; it is not 
quite grammar, but it is better than if it were ;] as care, trouble, 
and refinement can make them. 

It is the degree beyond that which to us has proved so fatal, 
and that I would our example could warn you from, as a small 
repayment for your hospitality and friendliness to us in our 
days of trouble. 

May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a new- 
year's wish from 

A French Lady. 

December 29. 



2 2 PREFACE, 

That, then, is the substance of what I would fain 
say convincingly, if it might be, to my girl friends ; 
at all events with certainty in my own mind that I 
was thus far a safe guide to them. 

XVI. For other and older readers it is needful 1 
should write a few words more, respecting what oppor- 
tunity I have had to judge, or right I have to speak, 
of such things ; for, indeed, too much of what I have 
said about women has been said in faith only. A 
wise and lovely English lady told me, when " Sesame 
and Lilies " first appeared, that she was sure the 
*' Sesame " w^ould be useful, but that in the " Lilies " 
I had been writing of what I knew nothing about. 
Which w^as in a measure too true, and also that it is 
more partial than my writings are usually : for as 
Ellesmere spoke in his speech on the interven- 
tion, not indeed otherwise than he felt, but yet 
altogether for the sake of Gretchen, so I wrote the 
*' Lilies" to please one girl; and were it not for 
what I remember of her, and of few besides, should 
now perhaps recast some of the sentences in the 
*' Lilies " in a very different tone : for as years have 
gone by, it has chanced to me, untowardly in some 
respects, fortunately in others (because it enables me 
to read history more clearly), to see the utmost evil 
that is in women, while I have had but to believe the 
utmost good. The best women are indeed neces- 
sarily the most difficult to know ; they are recognized 
chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and the 
nobleness of their children ; they are only to be di- 
vined, not discerned, by the stranger ; and, some- 
times, seem almost helpless except in their homes ; 



PREFACE, 23 

yet without the help of one of them,i to whom this 
book is dedicated, the day would probably .have come 
before now, when I should have written and thought 
no more. 

XVII. On the other hand, the fashion of the time 
renders whatever is forward, coarse, or senseless, in 
feminine nature, too palpable to all men : — the weak 
picturesqueness of my earlier writings brought me 
acquainted with much of their emptiest enthusiasm ; 
and the chances of later life gave me opportunities of 
watching women in states of degradation and vindic- 
tiveness which opened to me the gloomiest secrets of 
Greek and Syrian tragedy. I have seen them be- 
tray their household charities to lust, their pledged 
love to devotion ; I have seen mothers dutiful to 
their children, as Medea; and children dutiful to 
their parents, as the daughter of Herodias : but my 
trust is still unmoved in the preciousness of the 
natures that are so fatal in their error, and I leave 
the words of the '' LiHes " unchanged ; believing, yet, 
that no man ever lived a right life who had not been 
chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her 
courage, and guided by her discretion. 

XVIII . What I might myself have been, so helped, I 
rarely indulge in the idleness of thinking ; but what I am 
since I take on me the function of a teacher, it is well 
that the reader should know, as far as I can tell him. 

Not an unjust person ; not an unkind one ; not a 
false one ; a lover of order, labor, and peace. That, 
it seems to me, is enough to give me right to say all I 
care to say on ethical subjects : more, I could only 

1 (^iAtj. 



24 PREFACE, 

tell definitely through details of autobiography such 
as none but* prosperous and (in the simple sense of 
the word) faultless, lives could justify ; — and mine 
has been neither. Yet, if any one, skilled in reading 
the torn manuscripts of the human soul, cares for 
more intimate knowledge of me, he may have it by 
knowing with what persons in past history I have 
most sympathy. 

I will name three. 
■ In all that is strongest and deepest in me, — that 
? fits me for my work, and gives light or shadow to 
v^ my being, I have sympathy with Guido Guinicelli. 

In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of 
)things and of people, with Marmontel. 

In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts 
"of things and of people, with Dean Swift. 

Any one who can understand the natures of those 
three men, can understand mine : and having said 
so much ; I am content to leave both life and work 
to be remembered or forgotten, as their uses may 
deserve. 

Denmark Hill, January i, 1871. 



^'^'y.'*--'^ C / ' - ^^^ 






PREFACE — FIRST EDITION. 



A PASSAGE in the seventy-ninth page of this book, 
referring to Alpine travellers, will fall harshly on the 
reader's ear since it has been sorrowfully enforced by 
the deaths on Mont Cervin. I leave it, neverthe- 
less, as it stood, for I do not now write unadvisedly, 
and think it wrong to cancel what has once been 
thoughtfully said ; but it must not so remain without 
a few added words. 

No blame ought to attach to the Alpine tourist for 
incurring danger. There is usually sufficient cause, 
and real reward, for all difficult work ; and even were 
it otherwise, some experience of distinct peril, and 
the acquirement ot habits of quick and calm action 
in its presence, are necessary elements, at some 
period of life, in the formation of manly character. 
The blame of bribing guides into danger is a singu- 
lar accusation, in behalf of a people who have made 
mercenary soldiers of themselves for centuries, 
without any one's thinking of giving their fidelity 
better employment : though, indeed, the piece of 
work they did at the gate of the Tuileries, however 
useless, was no unwise one ; and their lion of flawed 
molasse at Lucerne, worthless in point of art though 
it be, is nevertheless a better reward than much pay ; 

25 



26 PREFACE, 

and a better ornament to the old town than the 
Schweizer Hof, or flat new quay, for the promenade 
of those travellers who do not take guides into danger. 
The British public are, however, at home, so innocent 
of ever buying their fellow-creatures' lives, that we 
may justly expect them to be punctilious abroad ! 
They do not, perhaps, often calculate how many 
souls flit annually, choked in fire-damp and sea-sand, 
from economically watched shafts, and economically 
manned ships ; nor see the fiery ghosts writhe up out 
of every scuttleful of cheap coals : nor count how 
many threads of girlish life are cut off and woven 
annually by painted Fates, into breadths of ball- 
dresses ; or soaked away, like rotten hemp-fibre, in 
the inlet of Cocytus which overflows the Grassmarket 
where flesh is as grass. We need not, it seems to 
me, loudly blame any one for paying a guide to take 
a brave walk with him. Therefore, gentlemen of the 
Alpine Club, as much danger as you care to face, by 
all means ; but, if you please, not so much talk of 
it. The real ground for reprehension of Alpine 
climbing is that, with less cause, it excites more van- 
ity than any other athletic skill. A good horseman 
knows what it has cost to make him one ; everybody 
else knows it too, and knows that he is one ; he need 
not ride at a fence merely to show his seat. But 
credit for practice in climbing can only be claimed 
after success, which, though perhaps accidental and 
unmerited, must yet be attained at all risks, or the 
shame of defeat borne with no evidence of the difli- 
culties encountered. At this particular period, also, 
the distinction obtainable by first conquest of a peak 



PREFACE. 27 

is as tempting to a traveller as the discovery of a new 
element to a chemist, or a new species to a naturalist. 
Vanity is never so keenly excited as by competitions 
which involve chance ; the course of science is con- 
tinually arrested, and its nomenclature fatally con- 
fused, by the eagerness of even wise and able men to 
establish their priority in an unimportant discovery, 
or obtain vested right to a syllable in a deformed 
word ; and many an otherwise sensible person will 
risk his life for the sake of a line in future guide- 
books, to the fact that " horn was first ascended 

by Mr. X. in the year ; " — never reflecting that 

of all the lines in the page, the one he has thus 
wrought for will be precisely the least interesting 
to the reader. 

It is not therefore strange, however much to be 
regretted, that while no gentleman boasts in other 
cases of his sagacity or his courage — while no good 
soldier talks of the charge he led, nor any good 
sailor of the helm he held, — every man among the 
Alps seems to lose his senses and modesty with the 
fall of the barometer, and returns from his Nephelo- 
coccygia brandishing his ice-axe in everybody's face. 
Whatever the Alpine Club have done, or may yet 
accomplish, in a sincere thirst for mountain knowl- 
edge, and in happy sense of youthful strength and 
play of animal spirit, they have done, and will do, 
wisely and well ; but whatever they are urged to by 
mere sting of competition and itch of praise, they 
will do, as all vain things must be done for ever, 
foolishly and ill. It is a strange proof of that absence 
of any real national love of science, of which I have 



28 PREFACE. 

had occasion to speak in the text, that no entire sur- 
vey of the Alps has yet been made by properly qual- 
ified men ; and that, except of the chain of Chamouni, 
no accurate maps exist, nor any complete geological 
section even of that. But Mr. Reilly^s survey of that 
central group, and the generally accurate information 
collected in the guide-book published by the Club, 
are honorable results of English adventure ; and it is 
to be hoped that the continuance of such work will 
gradually put an end to the vulgar excitement which 
looked upon the granite of the Alps only as an un- 
occupied advertisement wall for chalking names upon. 

Respecting the means of accomplishing such work 
with least risk, there was a sentence in the article of 
our leading public journal, which deserves, and re- 
quires expansion. 

"Their" (the Alpine club^s) "ropes must not 
break." 

Certainly not ! nor any one else's ropes, if they may 
be rendered unbreakable by honesty of make ; seeing 
that more lives hang by them on moving than on 
motionless seas. The records of the last gale at the 
Cape may teach us that economy in the manufacture 
of cables is not always a matter for exultation ; and, 
on the whole, it might even be well in an honest 
country, sending out, and up and down, various lines 
east and west, that nothing should break ; banks, — 
words, — nor dredging tackle. 

Granting, however, such praise and such sphere of 
exertion as we thus justly may, to the spirit of adven- 
ture, there is one consequence of it, coming directly 
under my own cognizance, of which I cannot but 



PREFACE. 29 

speak with utter regret, — the loss, namely, of all 
real understanding of the character and beauty of 
Switzerland, by the country's being now regarded as 
half watering-place, half gymnasium. It is indeed 
true that under the influence of the pride which gives 
poignancy to the sensations which others cannot 
share with us (and a not unjustifiable zest to the 
pleasure which we have worked for), an ordinary 
traveller -will usually observe and enjoy more on a 
difficult excursion than on an easy one ; and more in 
objects to which he is unaccustomed than in those 
with which he is familiar. He will notice with ex- 
treme interest that snow is white on the top of a hill 
in June, though he would have attached little impor- 
tance to the same peculiarity in a wreath at the 
bottom of a hill in January. He will generally find 
more to admire in a cloud under his feet, than in one 
over his head ; and, oppressed by the monotony of 
a sky which is prevalently blue, will derive extraor- 
dinary satisfaction from its approximation to black. 
Add to such grounds of delight the aid given to the 
efi"ect of whatever is impressive in the scenery of the 
high Alps, by the absence of ludicrous or degrading 
concomitants ; and it ceases to be surprising that 
Alpine excursionists should be greatly pleased, or 
that they should attribute their pleasure to some true 
and increased apprehension of the nobleness of 
natural scenery. But no impression can be more 
false. The real beauty of the Alps is to be seen, 
and seen only, where all may see it, the child, the 
cripple, and the man of gray hairs. There is more 
true loveliness in a single glade of pasture shadowed 



30 PREFACE. 

by pine, or gleam of rocky brook, or inlet of unsul- 
lied lake among the lower Bernese and Savoyard 
hills, than in the entire field of jagged gneiss which 
crests the central ridge from the Shreckhorn to the 
Viso. The valley of Cluse, through which unhappy 
travellers consent now to be invoiced, packed in 
baskets like fish, so only that they may cheaply 
reach, in the feverous haste which has become the 
law of their being, the glen of Chamouni whose 
every lovely foreground rock has now been broken up 
to build hotels for them, contains more beauty in 
half a league of it, than the entire valley they have 
devastated, and turned into a casino, did in its unin- 
jured pride ; and that passage of the Jura by Olten 
(between Basle and Lucerne), which is by the 
modern tourist triumphantly effected through a tunnel 
in ten minutes, between two piggish trumpet grunts 
proclamatory of the ecstatic transit, used to show 
from every turn and sweep of its winding ascent, up 
which one sauntered, gathering wild-flowers, for half 
a happy day, diviner aspects of the distant Alps than 
ever were achieved by toil of limb, or won by risk of 
life. 

There is indeed a healthy enjoyment both in engi- 
neers' work, and in schoolboys' play; the making 
and mending of roads has its true enthusiasms, and I 
have still pleasure enough in mere scrambling to 
wonder not a little at the supreme gravity with which 
apes exercise their superior powers in that kind, as 
if profitless to them. But neither macadamization, 
nor tunnelling, nor rope ladders, will ever enable one 
human creature to understand the pleasure in natural 



PREFACE, 31 

scenery felt by Theocritus or Virgil ; and I believe 
the athletic health of our schoolboys might be made 
perfectly consistent with a spirit of more courtesy 
and reverence, both for men and things, than is rec- 
ognizable in the behavior of modern youth. Some 
year or two back, I was staying at the Montanvert to 
paint Alpine roses, and went every day to watch the 
budding of a favorite bed, which was rounding into 
faultless bloom beneath a cirque of rock, high enough, 
as I hoped, and close enough, to guard it from rude 
eyes and plucking hands. But, 

" Tra erto e piano era un sentiero ghembo, 
Che ne condusse in fianco dell a lacca," 

and on the day it reached the fulness of its rubied 
fire, I was standing near when it was discovered by 
a forager on the flanks of a travelling school of Eng- 
lish and German lads. He shouted to his com- 
panions, and they swooped down upon it ; threw 
themselves into it, rolled over and over in it, shrieked, 
hallooed, and fought in it, trampled it down, and tore 
it up by the roots. Breathless at last with rapture of 
ravage, they fixed the brightest of the remnant blos- 
soms of it in their caps, and went on their way 
rejoicing. 

They left me much to think upon ; partly respect- 
ing the essential power of the beauty which could so 
excite them, and partly respecting the character of 
the youth which could only be excited to destroy. 
But the incident was a perfect type of that irrever- ^ 
erence for natural beauty with respect to which I said ! 
in the text, at the place already indicated, " You 



32 PREFACE, 

' make railroads of the aisles of the cathedrals of the 
earth, and eat off their altars." For indeed all true 
lovers of natural beauty hold it in reverence so deep, 
that they would as soon think of climbing the pillars 
of the choir of Beauvais for a gymnastic exercise, as 
of making a playground of Alpine snow : and they 
would not risk one hour of their joy among the hill 
meadows on a May morning, for the fame or fortune 
of having stood on every pinnacle of the silver tem- 
ple, and beheld the kingdoms of the world from it. 
Love of excitement is so far from being love of 
beauty, that it ends always in a joy in its exact re- 
verse ; joy in destruction, — as of my poor roses, — 
or in actual details of death ; until, in the literature 
of the day " nothing is too dreadful, or too trivial, for 
the greed of the public." ^ And in politics, apathy, 
irreverence, and lust of luxury go hand in hand, until 
the best solemnization which can be conceived for 
the greatest event in modern European history, the 
crowning of Florence capital of Italy, is the accursed 
and ill-omened folly of casting down her old walls, 
anS surrounding her with a *' boulevard ; " and this 
at the very time when every stone of her ancient 
cities is more precious to her than the gems of a 
Urim breastplate, and when every nerve of her heart 
and brain should have been strained to redeem her 
guilt and fulfil her freedom. It is not by making 
roads round Florence, but through Calabria, that she 
should begin her Roman causeway work again ; and 
her fate points her march, not on boulevards by 
Arno, but waist-deep in the lagoons at Venice. Not 

1 Pall Mall Gazette, August 15th, article on the Forward murders. 



PREFACE. ZZ 

yet, indeed, but five years of patience and discipline 
of her youth would accomplish her power, and swxep 
the martello towers from the cliffs of Verona, and 
the ramparts from the marsh of Mestre. But she 
will not teach her youth that discipline on boulevards. 
Strange, that while we both, French and English,' 
can give lessons in war, we only corrupt other nations 
when they imitate either our pleasures or our indus- 
tries. We English, had we loved Switzerland in- 
deed, should have striven to elevate, but not to dis- 
turb, the simplicity of her people, by teaching them 
the sacredness of their fields and waters, the honor 
of their pastoral and burgher life, and the fellowship 
in glory of the gray turreted walls round their ancient 
cities, with their cottages in their fair groups by the 
forest and lake. Beautiful, indeed, upon the moun- 
tains, had been the feet of any who had spoken 
peace to their children ; who had taught those princely 
peasants to remember their lineage, and their league 
with the rocks of the field ; that so they might keep 
their mountain waters pure, and their mountain paths 
peaceful, and their traditions of domestic life holy. 
We have taught them (incapable by circumstances 
and position of ever becoming a great commercial 
nation) all the foulness of the modern lust of wealth, 
without its practical intelligences ; and we have de- 
veloped exactly the weakness of their temperament 
by which they are liable to meanest ruin. Of the 
ancient architecture and most expressive beauty of 
their country there is now little vestige left ; and it is 
one of the few reasons which console me for the 
advance of life, that I am old enough to remember 



34 PREFACE, 

the time when the sweet waves of the Reuss and 
Limmat (now foul with the refuse of manufacture) 
were as crystalline as the heaven above them ; when 
her pictured bridges and embattled towers ran un- 
broken round Lucerne ; when the Rhone flowed in deep 
green, softly dividing currents round the wooded 
ramparts of Geneva ; and when from the marble roof 
of the western vault of Milan, I could watch the Rose 
of Italy flush in the first morning light, before a 
human foot had suUied its summit, or the reddening 
dawn on its rocks taken shadow of sadness from the 
crimson which long ago stained the ripples of 
Otterburn. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Preface 3 

Preface to First Edition . . . 25 

LECTURE I. 

Of Kings^ Treasuries .... 39 

LECTURE IL 

Of Queens' Gardens . . . . 10 1 

LECTURE IIL 

The Mystery of Life and its Arts . 142 



SESAME AND LILIES 

THREE LECTURES. 



SESAME AND LILIES. 



LECTURE I. — SESAME. 
OF kings' treasuries. 

" You shall each have a cake of sesame, — and ten pound." 

— Luc IAN : The Fisherman, 

I. I BELIEVE, ladies and gentlemen, that my first 
duty this evening is to ask your pardon for the am- 
biguity of title under which the subject of lecture has 
been announced, and for having endeavored, as you 
may ultimately think, to obtain your audience under 
false pretences. For indeed I am not going to talk 
of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, under- 
stood to contain wealth ; but of quite another order 
of royalty, and material of riches, than those usually 
acknowledged. And I had even intended to ask your 
attention for a little while on trust, and (as sometimes 
one contrives in taking a friend to see a favorite piece 
of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show, 
with such imperfect cunning as I might, until we had 
unexpectedly reached the best point of view by 
winding paths. But since my good plain-spoken 
friend. Canon Anson, has already partly anticipated 
my reserved ' ' trot for the avenue " in his first adver- 

39 



40 SESAME AND LILIES. 

tised title of subject, ''How and What to Read;" 
— and as also I have heard it said, by men practised 
in public address, that hearers are never so much 
fatigued as by the endeavor to follow a speaker who 
gives them no clew to his purpose, I will take the 
slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly that I want 
to speak to you about books ; and about the way we 
read them, and could, or should read them. A grave 
subject, you will say ; and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide 
that I shall make no effort to touch the compass of it. 
I will try only to bring before you a few simple 
thoughts about reading, which press themselves upon 
me every day more deeply, as I watch the course of 
the public mind with respect to our daily enlarging 
means of education, and the answeringly wider spread- 
ing, on the levels, of the irrigation of literature. 

2. It happens that I have practically some connec- 
tion with schools for different classes of youth ; and I 
receive many letters from parents respecting the educa- 
tion of their children. In the mass of these letters, I 
am always struck by the precedence which the idea of 
a "position in life" takes above all other thoughts 
in the parents' — more especially in the mothers' — 
minds. " The education befitting such and such a 
station in life " — this is the phrase, this is the object, 
always. They never seek, as far as I can make out, 
an education good in itself: the conception of abstract 
Tightness in training rarely seems reached by the 
writers. But an education " which shall keep a good 
coat on my son's back ; — an education which shall 
enable him to ring with confidence the visitors' bell 
at double-belled doors, — education which shall re- 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 41 

suit ultimately in establishment of a double-belled 
door to his own house ; in a word, which shall lead 
to advancement in life." It never seems to occur to 
the parents that there may be an education which in 
itself is advancement in Life ; that any other than 
that may perhaps be advancement in Death ; and 
that this essential education might be more easily 
got, or given, than they fancy, if they set about it 
in the right way ; while it is for no price, and by 
no favor, to be got, if they set about it in the 
wrong. 

3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and 
effective in the mind of this busiest of countries, I 
suppose the first — at least that which is confessed 
with the greatest frankness, and put forward as the 
fittest stimulus to youthful exertion — is this of " Ad- 
vancement in life." My main purpose this evening 
is to determine, with you, what this idea practically 
includes, and what it should include. 

Practically, then, at present, "advancement in 
life " means becoming conspicuous in life ; obtaining 
a position which shall be acknowledged by others to 
be respectable or honorable. We do not understand 
by this advancement, in general, the mere making of 
money, but the being known to have made it ; not 
the accomplishment of any great aim, but the being 
seen to have accomplished it. In a word, we mean 
the gratification of our thirst for applause. That 
thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also 
the first infirmity of weak ones ; and, on the whole, 
the strongest impulsive influence of average humanity. 
The greatest efforts of the race have always been 



42 SESAME AND LILIES. 

traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catas- 
trophes to the love of pleasure. 

4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. 
I want you only to feel how it lies at the root of 
effort, especially of all modern effort. It is the grati- 
fication of vanity which is, with us, the stimulus 
of toil, and balm of repose ; so closely does it touch 
the very springs of life, that the wounding of our 
vanity is always spoken of (and truly) as in its meas- 
ure mortal; we call it *' mortification," using the 
same expression which we should apply to a gangre- 
nous and incurable bodily hurt. And although few 
of us may be physicians enough to recognize the 
various effect of this passion upon health and energy, 
I believe most honest men know and would at once 
acknowledge its leading power with them as a motive. 
The seaman does not commonly desire to be made 
captain only because he knows he can manage the 
ship better than any other sailor on board. He wants 
to be made captain that he may be called captain. 
The clergyman does not usually want to be made 
a bishop only because he believes that no other hand 
can, as firmly as his, direct the diocese through its 
difficulties. He wants to be made bishop primarily 
that he may be called " My Lord." And a prince 
does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject to 
gain, a kingdom because he believes that no one else 
can as well serve the state upon the throne, but, 
briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as *' Your 
Majesty," by as many lips as may be brought to such 
utterance. 

5. This, then, being the main idea of advancement 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 43 

in life, the force of it applies, for all of us, according 
to our station, particularly to that secondary result of 
such advancement which we call *' getting into good 
society." We want to get into good society, not that 
we may have it, but that we may be seen in it ; and 
our notion of its goodness depends primarily on its 
conspicuousness. 

Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put 
what I fear you may think an impertinent question? 
I never can go on with an address unless I feel, or 
know, that my audience are either with me or against 
me : (I do not much care which, in the beginning ;) 
but I must know where they are ; and I would fain 
find out, at this instant, whether you think I am 
putting the motives of popular action too low. I 
am resolved to-night, to state them low enough to be 
admitted as probable ; for whenever, in my writings 
on Political Economy, I assume that a little honesty, 
or generosity, — or what used to be called "virtue" 
— may be calculated upon as a human motive of 
action, people always answer me, saying, " You must 
not calculate on that : that is not in human nature : 
you must not assume anything to be common to men 
but acquisitiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling 
ever has influence on them, except accidentally, and 
in matters out of the way of business." I begin accord- 
ingly to-night, low down in the scale of motives ; but 
I must know if you think me right in doing so. There- 
fore, let me ask those who admit the love of praise to 
be usually the strongest motive in men's minds in 
seeking advancement, and the honest desire of doing 
any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary one, to 



44 SESAME AND LILIES. 

hold up their hands. {About a dozen hands held up 
— the audience partly ?iot being sure the lectiirer is 
serious, and partly shy of expressing opinion.) I am 
quite serious — I really do want to know what you 
think ; however, I can judge by putting the reverse 
question. Will those who think that duty is gener- 
ally the first, and love of praise the second motive, 
hold up their hands? {One hand reported to have 
been held up, behind the lecturer.) Very good : I see 
you are with me, and that you think I have not begun 
too near the ground. Now, without teasing you by 
putting farther question, I venture to assume that you 
will admit duty as at least a secondary or tertiary 
motive. You think that the desire of doing some- 
thing useful, or obtaining some real good, is indeed 
an existent collateral idea, though a secondary one, 
in most men's desire of advancement. You will grant 
that moderately honest men desire place and ofifice, 
at least in some measure for the sake of their benefi- 
cient power ; and would wish to associate rather with 
sensible and well-informed persons than with fools 
and ignorant persons, whether they are seen in the 
company of the sensible ones or not. And finally, 
without being troubled by repetition of any common 
truisms about the preciousness of friends, and the 
influence of companions, you will admit, doubtless, 
that, according to the sincerity of our desire that our 
friends may be true, and our companions wise, — and 
in proportion to the earnestness and discretion with 
which we choose both, will be the general chances of 
our happiness and usefulness. 

6. But, granting that we had both the will and the 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 45 

sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have J 
the power ! or, at least, how limited, for most, is the 
sphere of choice ! Nearly all our associations are '^p^ 
determined by chance or necessity ; and restricted 
within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we 
would ; and those whom we know, we cannot have at 
our side when we most need them. All the higher 
circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, 
only momentarily and partially open. We may, by 
good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and ^ 
hear the sound of his voice ; or put a question to a 
man of science, and be answered good-humoredly. 
We may intrude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet min- 
ister, answered probably with words worse than silence, 
being deceptive ; or snatch, once or twice in our lives, 
the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a 
princess, or arresting the kind glance of a queen. 
And yet these momentary chances we covet ; and 
spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit 
of little more than these ; while, meantime, there is a ^ 
society continually open to us, of people who will ,/ 
talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or 
occupation ; — talk to us in the best words they can 
choose, and with thanks if we listen to them. And 
this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, 
— and can be kept waiting round us all day long, not 
to granf audience, but to gain it ; — kings and states- 
men lingering patiently in those plainly furnished 
and narrow anterooms, our bookcase shelves, — we 
make no account of that company, — perhaps never 
listen to a word they would say, all day long ! 

7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within 



46 SESAME AND LILIES. 

yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard this 
company of the noble, who are praying us to listen to 
them, and the passions with which we pursue the 
company, probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or 
who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this, 
— that we can see the faces of the living men, and it 
is themselves, and not their sayings, with which we 
desire to become familiar. But it is not so. Suppose 
you never were to see their faces ; — suppose you 
could be put behind a screen in the statesman's 
cabinet, or the prince's chamber, would you not be 
glad to listen to their words, though you were for- 
bidden to advance beyond the screen? And when 
the screen is only a little less, folded in two, instead 
of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of 
the two boards that bind a book, and listen, all day 
long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, deter- 
mined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; — this 
station of audience, and honorable privy council you 
despise ! 

8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the 
living people talk of things that are passing, and are 
of immediate interest to you, that you desire to hear 
them. Nay ; that cannot be so, for the living people 
will themselves tell you about passing matters, much 
better in their writings than in their careless talk. 
But I admit that this motive does influence you, so 
far as you prefer those rapid and ephemeral writings 
to slow and enduring writings — books, properly so 
called. For all books are divisible into two classes, 
the books of the hour, and the books of all time. 
Mark this distinction — it is not one of quality only. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 47 

It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and 
the good one that does. It is a distinction of species. 
There are good books for the hour, and good ones 
for all time ; bad books for the hour and bad ones 
for all time. I must define the two kinds before I go 
farther. 

9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not 
speak of the bad ones — is simply the useful or pleas- 
ant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise 
converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, tell- 
ing you what you need to know ; very pleasant often, as 
a sensible friend's present talk would be . These bright 
accounts of travels ; good-humored and witty discus- 
sions of question ; lively or pathetic story-telling in the 
form of novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real agents 
concerned in the events of passing history ; — all these 
books of the hour, multiplying among us as education 
becomes more. general, are a peculiar characteristic 
and possession of the present age : we ought to be 
entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of 
ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we 
make the worst possible use, if we allow them to 
usurp the place of true books : for, strictly speaking, 
they are not books at all, but merely letters or news- 
papers in good print. Our friend's letter may be 
delightful, or necessary, to-day : whether worth keep- 
ing or not, is to be considered. The newspaper 
may be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assur- 
edly it is not reading for all day. So, though bound 
up in a volume, the long letter which gives you so 
pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, and 
weather last year at such a place, or which tells you 



48 SESAME AND LILIES, 

that amusing story, or gives you the real circum- 
stances of such and such events, however valuable 
for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense 
of the word, a " book " at all, nor, in the real sense, 
to be *' read.*' A book is essentially not a talked 
thing, but a written thing ; and written, not with the 
view of mere communication, but of permanence. 
The book of talk is printed only because its author 
cannot speak to thousands of people at once ; if he 
could, he would — the volume is mere tmiltiplication 
of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India ; 
if you could, you would ; you write instead : that is 
mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not 
to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, 
but to preserve it. The author has something to 
say which he perceives to be true and useful, or help- 
fully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet 
said it ; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. 
He is bound to say it, clearly and melodiously if he 
may ; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he 
finds this to be the thing, or group of things, mani- 
fest to him; — this the piece of true knowledge, or 
sight which his share of sunshine and earth has per- 
mitted him to seize. He would fain set it down for 
ever: engrave it on rock, if he could; saying, " This 
is the best of me ; for the rest, I ate, and drank, and 
slept, loved, and hated, like another : my life was as 
the vapor, and is not ; but this I saw and knew : 
this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." 
That is his *' writing ; " it is, in his small human way, 
and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in 
him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a *' Book." 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 49 

10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so 
written ? 

But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in 
honesty, or at all in kindness? or do you think there 
is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people ? 
None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. 
Well, whatever bit of a wise man^s work is honestly 
or benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece 
of art.i It is mixed always with evil fragments — 
ill-done, redundant, affected work. But if you read 
rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and those 
are the book. 

1 1 . Now books of this kind have been written in 
all ages by their greatest men- — by great leaders, 
great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at 
your choice ; and life is short. You have heard as 
much before ; — yet have you measured and mapped 
out this short life and its possibilities? Do you 
know, if you read this, that you cannot read that — 
that what you lose to-da}iyou cannot gain to-morrow? 
Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, or your 
stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings ; 
or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy con- 
sciousness of your own claims to respect that you 
jostle with the common crowd for entree here and 
audience there, when all the while this eternal court 
is open to you, with its society wide as the world, 
multitudinous as its days, the chosen, and the mighty, 
of every place and time? Into that you may enter 
always ; in that you may take fellowship and rank 

^ Note this sentence carefully, and compare the Queen of the A ir 
§ 106. 



so SESAME AND LILIES. 

according to your wish ; from that, once entered into 
it, you can never be outcast but by your own fault ; 
by your aristocracy of companionship, there, your own 
inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and the 
motives with which you strive to take high place in 
the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth 
and sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire 
to take in this company of the Dead. 

12. *' The place you desire," ^nd the place you fit 
yourself for, I must also say; because, observe, this 
court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in 
this : — it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing 
else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no 
artifice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian gates. 
In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever 
enters there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg 
St. Germain, there is but brief question, "Do you 
deserve to enter?" "Pass. Do you ask to be the 
companion of nobles ? Make yourself noble, and you 
shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the 
wise? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. 
But on other terms ? — no. If you will not rise to us, 
we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume 
courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought 
to you with considerable pain ; but here we neither 
feign nor interpret ; you must rise to the level of our 
thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and 
share our feelings, if you would recognize our 
presence." 

13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I 
admif that it is much. You must, in a word, love 
these people, if you are to be among them. No 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 51 

ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambition. 
You must love them, and show your love in these two 
following ways. 

I. First, by a true desire to be taught by them, 
and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into 
theirs, observe ; not to find your owm expressed by 
them. If the person who wrote the book is not 
wiser than you, you need not read it ; if he be, he 
will think differently from you in many respects. 

Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good 
this is — that's exactly what I think ! " But the right 
feeling is, " How strange that is ! I never thought 
of that before, and yet I see it is true ; or if I do not 
now, I hope I shall, some day." But whether thus 
submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to 
the author to get at i^/i" meaning, not to find yours. 
Judge it afterwards, if you think yourself qualified to 
do so, but ascertain it first. And be sure also, if the 
author is worth anything, that you will not get at his 
meaning all at once ; — nay, that at his whole mean- 
ing you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. 
Not that he does not say what he means and in 
strong words too ; but he cannot say it all ; and what 
is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in 
parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. 
I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyze that 
cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes 
them always hide their deeper thought. They do 
not give it you by way of help, but of reward, and 
will make themselves sure that you deserve it before 
they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with 
the physical type of wisdom, gold. There seems, 



52 SESAME AND LILIES, 

to you and me, no reason why the electric forces of 
the earth should not carry whatever there is of gold 
within it at once to the mountain tops, so that kings 
and people might know that all the gold they could 
get was there ; and without any trouble of digging, 
or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, 
and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does 
not manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the 
earth, nobody knows where ; you may dig long and 
find none ; you must dig painfully to find any. 

14. And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. 
When you come to a good book, you must ask your- 
self, ''Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner 
would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, 
and am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to 
the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper?" 
And, keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost 
of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, 
the metal you are in search of being the author's 
mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which 
you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. 
And your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learn- 
ing; your smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful 
soul. Do not hope to get at any good author's mean- 
ing without those tools and that fire ; often you will 
need sharpest, finest chiselling, and patientest fusing, 
before you can gather one grain of the metal. 

15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly 
and authoritatively (I kiiow I am right in this), you 
must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, 
and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by 
syllable — nay, letter by letter. For though it is only 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. S3 

by reason of the opposition of letters in the function 
of signs, to sounds in function of signs, that the study 
of books is called '' literature," and that a man versed 
in it is called, by the consent of nations, a man of 
letters instead of a man of books, or of words, you 
may yet connect with that accidental nomenclature 
this real principle ; — that you might read all the 
books in the British Museum (if you could live long 
enough), and remain an utterly ''illiterate," unedu- 
cated person ; but that if you read ten pages of a good 
book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with real 
accuracy, — you are for evermore in some measure an 
educated person. The entire difference between 
education and non-education (as regards the merely 
intellectual part of it) consists in this accuracy. A 
well-educated gentleman may not know many lan- 
guages, may not be able to speak any but his own, 
may have read very few books. But whatevtr 
language he knows, he knows precisely ; whatever 
word he pronounces he pronounces rightly : above 
all, he is learned in the^^^r^^^ of words ; knows the 
words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, 
from words of modern canaille ; remembers all their 
ancestry — their intermarriages, distantest relation- 
ships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and 
offices they held, among the national noblesse of 
words at any time, and in any country. But an un- 
educated person may know by memory any number 
of languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know 
not a word of any, — not a word even of his own. 
An ordinarily clever and sensible seaman will be able 
to make his way ashore at most ports ; yet he has 



54 SESAME AND LILIES. 

only to speak a sentence of any language to be known 
for an illiterate person ; so also the accent, or turn of 
expression of a single sentence will at once mark a 
scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively 
admitted by educated persons, that a false accent or 
a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of 
any civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain 
degree of inferior standing forever. 

1 6. And this is right; but it is a pity that the 
accuracy insisted on is not greater, and required to a 
serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin quan- 
tity should excite a smile in the House of Commons ; 
but it is wrong that a false English meaning should 
not excite a frown there. Let the accent of words be 
watched, by all means, but let their meaning be 
watched more closely still, and fewer will do the 
work. A few words well chosen and well distin- 
guished, will do work that a thousand cannot, when 
every one is acting, equivocally, in the function of 
another. Yes ; and words, if they are not watched, 
will do deadly work sometimes. There are masked 
words droning and skulking about us in Europe just 
now, — (there never were so many, owing to the 
spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious 
*' information," or rather deformation, everywhere, 
and to the teaching of catechisms and phrases at 
schools instead of human meanings) — there are 
masked words abroad, I say, which nobody under- 
stands, but which everybody uses, and most people 
will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying 
they mean this, or that, or the other, of things dear 
to them : for such words wear chameleon cloaks 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 55 

— *' groundlion^' cloaks, of the color of the ground 
of any man^s fancy : on that ground they lie in wait, 
and rend him with a spring from it. There were 
never creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplo- 
matists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as 
these masked words.; they are the unjust stewards of 
all men's ideas : whatever fancy or favorite instinct a 
man most cherishes, he gives to his favorite masked 
word to take care of for him ; the word at last comes 
to have an infinite power over him, — you cannot get 
at him but by its ministry. 

17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the 
English, there is a fatal power of equivocation put 
into men's hands, almost whether they will or no, in 
being able to use Greek or Latin forms for a word 
when they want it to be respectable, and Saxon or 
otherwise common forms when they want to discredit 
it. What a singular and salutary effect, for instance, 
would be produced on the minds of people who are 
in the habit of taking the Form of the words they live 
by, for the Power of which those words tell them, if 
we always either retained, or refused, the Greek form 
** biblos,'' or ''biblion," as the right expression for 
*'book" — instead of employing it only in the one 
instance in which we wish to give dignity to the idea, 
and translating it everywhere else. How wholesome 
it would be for the many simple persons who worship 
the Letter of God's word instead of its Spirit (just as 
other idolaters worship His picture instead of His 
presence), if, in such places (for instance as Acts 
xix. 19), we retained the Greek expression, instead of 
translating it, and they had to read, *' Many of them 



S6 SESAME AND LILIES, 

also which used curious arts, brought their bibles 
together, and burnt them before all men ; and they 
counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand 
pieces of silver ! " Or if, on the other hand, we 
translated instead of retaining it, and always spoke 
of ''The Holy Book," instead of " Holy Bible," it 
might come into more heads than it does at present 
that the Word of God, by which the heavens were, 
of old, and by which they are now kept in store, ^ 
cannot be made a present of to anybody in morocco 
binding ; nor sown on any wayside by help either of 
steam plough or steam press ; but is nevertheless 
being offered to us daily, and by us with contumely 
refused ; and sown in us daily, and by us as instantly 
as may be, choked. 

i8. So, again, consider what effect has been pro- 
duced on the English vulgar mind by the use of the 
sonorous Latin form " damno," in translating the 
Greek KaTccxQl^u), when people charitably wish to make 
it forcible ; and the substitution of the temperate 
''condemn" for it, when they choose to keep it 
gentle. And what notable sermons have been 
preached by illiterate clergymen on — "He that 
believeth not shall be damned ; " though they would 
shrink with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, 
" The saving of his house, by which he damned the 
world," or John viii. 12, "Woman, hath no man 
damned thee? She saith. No man. Lord. Jesus 
answered her. Neither do I damn thee ; go and sin no 
more." And divisions in the mind of Europe, which 
have cost seas of blood, and in the defence of which 

* 2 Peter iii. 5-7. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 5? 

the noblest souls of men have been cast away in 
frantic desolation, countless as forest leaves — though, 
in the heart of them, founded on deeper causes — 
have nevertheless been rendered practicably possible, 
mainly, by the European adoption of the Greek word 
for a public meeting, to give peculiar respectability to 
such meetings, when held for religious purposes ; 
and other collateral equivocations, such as the vulgar 
English one of using the word "priest*' as a con- 
traction for " presbyter." 

19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this 
is the habit you must form. Nearly every word in 
your language has been first a word of some other 
language — of Saxon, German, French, Latin, or 
Greek ; (not to speak of eastern and primitive dia- 
lects.) And many words have been all these ; — that 
is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, French 
or German next, and English last : undergoing a cer- 
tain change of sense and use on the lips of each 
nation ; but retaining a deep vital meaning which all 
good scholars feel in employing them, even at this 
day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn 
it; young or old — girl or boy — whoever you may 
be, if you think of reading seriously (which, of 
course, implies that you have some leisure at com- 
mand), learn your Greek alphabet; then get good 
dictionaries of all these languages, and whenever you 
are in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. 
Read Max Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; 
and, after that, never let a word escape you that looks 
suspicious. It is severe work; but you will find it, 
even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly amus- 



S8 SESAME AND LILIES. 

ing. And the general gain to your character, in 
power and precision, will be quite incalculable. 

Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to 
know, Greek, or Latin, or French. It takes a whole 
life to learn any language perfectly. But* you can 
easily ascertain the meanings through which the 
English word has passed ; and those which in a good 
writer's work it must still bear. 

20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, 
with your permission, read a few lines of a true book 
with you, carefully ; and see what will come out of 
them. I will take a book perfectly known to you all. 
No English words are more famihar to us, yet noth- 
ing perhaps has been less read with sincerity. 1 will 
take these few following lines of Lycidas. 



" Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 
How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, 
Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
Creep and intrude, and climb into the fold! 
Of other care they little reckoning make, 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 
That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 
And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 59 

But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said." 

Let us think over this passage, and examine its words . 

First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to 
St. Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but 
the very types of it which Protestants usually refuse 
most passionately? His " mitred ^^ locks! Milton 
was no Bishop-lover; how comes St. Peter to be 
*' mitred"? *' Two massy keys he bore." Is this, 
then, the power of the keys claimed by the Bishops 
of Rome, and is it acknowledged here by Milton only 
in a poetical licence, for the sake of its picturesque- 
ness, that he may get the gleam of the golden keys to 
help his effect ? Do not think it. Great men do not 
play stage tricks with doctrines of life and death : 
only little men do that. Milton means what he says ; 
and means it with his might too — is going to put the 
whole strength of his spirit presently into the saying 
of it. For though not a lover of false bishops, he 
was a lover of true ones ; and the Lake pilot is here, 
in his thoughts, the type and head of true episcopal 
power. For Milton reads that text, " I will give unto 
thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven" quite 
honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot 
it out of the book because there have been bad 
bishops ; nay, in order to understand him, we must 
understand that verse first ; it will not do to eye 
it askance, or whisper it under our breath, as if it 
were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is a solemn, 
universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind by all 



6o SESAME AND LILIES. 

sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason 
on it if we go on a little farther, and come back to it. 
For clearly, this marked insistance on the power of 
the true episcopate is to make us feel more weightily 
what is to be charged against the false claimants of 
episcopate ; or generally, against false claimants of 
power and rank in the bod^' of the clergy ; they who, 
*' for their bellies' sake, creep, and intrude, and climb 
into the fold." 

21. Do not think Milton uses those three words to 
fill up his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs 
all the three ; specially those three, and no more than 
those — " creep,'' and "intrude," and "climb;" no 
other words would or could serve the turn, and no 
more could be added. For they exhaustively com- 
prehend the three classes, correspondent to the three 
characters, of men who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical 
power. First, those who ''creep'''' into the fold; who 
do not care for office, nor name, but for secret influ- 
ence, and do all things occultly and cunningly^ con- 
senting to any servihty of office or conduct, so only 
that they may intimately discern, and unawares 
direct, the minds of men. Then those who "in- 
trude " (thrust, that is) themselves into the fold, who 
by natural insolence of heart, and stout eloquence 
of tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self-assertion, 
obtain hearing and authority with the common crowd. 
Lastly, those who " climb," who, by labor and learn- 
ing, both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in 
the cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities 
and authorities, and become "lords over the heri- 
tage," though not " ensamples to the flock." 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 6 1 

22. Now go on : — 

*''■ Of other care they Httle reckoning make 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
Blind mouths — " 

I pause again, for this is a strange expression ; a 
broken metaphor, one might think, careless and un- 
scholarly. 

Not so : its very audacity and pithiness are in- 
tended to make us look close at the phrase and re- 
member it. Those two monosyllables express the 
precisely accurate contraries of right character, in 
the two great offices of the Church — those of bishop 
and pastor. 

A Bishop means a person who sees. 

A Pastor means one who feeds. 

The most unbishoply character a man can have is 
therefore to be Blind. 

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want 
to be fed, — to be a Mouth. 

Take the two reverses together, and you have 
*' blind mouths." We may advisedly follow out this 
idea a little. Nearly all the evils in the Church have 
arisen from bishops desiring power more than light. 
They want authority, not outlook. Whereas their 
real office is not to rule ; though it may be vigorously 
to exhort and rebuke ; it is the king^s office to rule ; 
the bishop's office is to oversee the flock ; to number 
it sheep by sheep ; to be ready always to give full 
account of it. Now it is clear he cannot give account 
of the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the 
bodies of his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a 



62 SESAME AND LILIES. 

bishop has to do is at least to put himself in a posi- 
tion in which, at any moment, he can obtain the 
history from childhood of every living soul in his 
diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back 
street, Bill, and Nancy, knocking each other's teeth 
out ! — Does the bishop know all about it? Has he 
his eye upon them ? Has he had his eye upon them ? 
Can he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got 
into the habit of beating Nancy about the head? If 
he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as 
high as Salisbury steeple; he is no bishop, — he has 
sought to be at the helm instead of the masthead ; 
he has no sight of things. *' Nay,'' you say, '* it is 
not his duty to look after Bill in the back street."" 
What ! the fat sheep that have full fleeces — you think 
it is only those he should look after, while (go back 
to your Milton) "the hungry sheep look up, and are 
not fed, besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw '' 
(bishops knowing nothing about it) " daily devours 
apace, and nothing said?" 

'' But that's not our idea of a bishop." ^ Perhaps 
not; but it was St. Paul's; and it was Milton's. 
They may be right, or we may be ; but we must not 
think we are reading either one or the other by put- 
tins: our meaning into their words. 

23. I go on. 

" But, swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw."' 

This is to meet the vulgar answer that '* if the poor 
are not looked after in their bodies, they are in their 
souls ; they have spiritual food." 

1 Compare tlie 13 th Letter in Time and Tide. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. (iZ 

And Milton says, *'They have no such thing as 
spiritual food ; they are only swollen with wind." At 
first you may think that is a coarse type, and an 
obscure one. But again, it is a quite literally accu- 
rate one. Take up your Latin and Greek dictionaries, 
and find out the meaning of " Spirit." It is only a 
contraction of the Latin word "breath," and an 
indistinct translation of the Greek word for " wind." 
The same word is used in writing, " The wind blow- 
eth where it listeth ; " and in writing, "So is every 
one that is born of the Spirit ; " born of the breath, 
that is ; for it means the breath of God, in soul and 
body. We have the true sense of it in our words 
"inspiration" and "expire." Now, there are two 
kinds of breath with which the flock may be filled ; 
God's breath, and man's. The breath of God is 
health, and life, and peace to them, as the air of 
heaven is to the flocks on the hills ; but man's breath 
— the word which he calls spiritual, — is disease and 
contagion to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot 
inwardly with it ; they are puffed up by it, as a dead 
body by the vapors of its own decomposition. This 
is literally true of all false religious teaching ; the 
first, and last, and fatalest sign of it is that " pufiing 
up." Your converted children, who teach -their 
parents ; your converted convicts, who teach honest 
men ; your converted dunces who, having lived in 
cretinous stupefaction half their lives, suddenly awak- 
ing to the fact of there being a God, fancy themselves 
therefore His peculiar people and messengers ; your 
sectarians of every species, small and great. Catholic 
or Protestant, of high church or low, in so far as they 



64 SESAME AND LILIES. 

think themselves exclusively in the right and others 
wrong ; and pre-eminently, in every sect, those who 
hold that men can be saved by thinking rightly in- 
stead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, and 
wish instead of work : — these are the true fog chil- 
dren — clouds, these, without water; bodies, these, 
of putrescent vapor and skin, without blood or flesh : 
blown bag-pipes for the fiends to pipe with — corrupt, 
and corrupting, — " Swollen with wind, and the rank 
mist they draw." 

24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the 
power of the keys, for now we can understand them. 
Note the difference between Milton and Dante in 
their interpretation of this power : for once the latter 
is weaker in thought ; he supposes both the keys to 
be of the gate of heaven ; one is of gold, the other of 
silver: they are given by St. Peter to the sentinel 
angel ; and it is not easy to determine the meaning 
either of the substances of the three steps of the gate, 
or of the two keys. But Milton makes one, of gold, 
the key of heaven ; the other, of iron, the key of the 
prison, in which the wicked teachers are to be bound 
who "have taken away the key of knowledge, yet 
entered not in themselves." 

We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor 
are to see, and feed ; and, of all who do so, it is said, 
*' He that watereth, shall be watered also himself." 
But the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, 
shall be withered himself, and he that seeth not, 
shall himself be shut out of sight, — shut into the 
perpetual prison-house. And that prison opens here, 
as well as hereafter : he who is to be bound in heaven 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 6$ 

must first be bound on earth. That command to the 
strong angels, of which the rock-apostle is the image, 
"Take him, and bind him hand and foot, and cast 
him out," issues, in its measure, against the teacher, 
for every help Vvithheld, and for every truth refused, 
and for every falsehood enforced ; so that he is 
more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther 
outcast as he more and more misleads, till at last the 
bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as **the 
golden opes, the iron shuts amain." 

25. We have got something out of the lines, I 
think, and much more is yet to be found in them ; 
but we have done enough by way of example of the 
kind of word-by-word examination of your author 
which is rightly called *' reading;" watching every 
accent and expression, and putting ourselves always 
in the author's place, annihilating our own person- 
ahty, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able 
assuredly to say, " Thus Milton thought," not " Thus 
I thought, in misreading Milton." And by this 
process you will gradually come to attach less weight 
to your own " Thus I thought " at other times. You 
will begin to perceive that what yoii thought was a 
matter of no serious importance ; — that your thoughts 
on any subject are not perhaps the clearest and wisest 
that could be arrived at thereupon : — in fact, that 
unless you are a very singular person, you cannot be 
said to have any "thoughts" at all ; that you have 
no materials for them, in any serious matters ; ^ — no 

^ Modern " Education " for the most part signifies giving people the 
faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance 
to them. 



66 SESAME AND LILIES. 

right to '' think," but only to try to learn more of the 
facts. Nay, most probably all your life (unless, as I 
said, you are a singular person) you will have no 
legitimate right to an "opinion" on any business, 
except that instantly under your hand. What must 
of necessity be done, you can always find out, beyond 
question, how to do. Have you a house to keep in 
order, a commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch 
to cleanse? There need be no two opinions about 
these proceedings ; it is at your peril if you have not 
much more than an " opinion" on the way to manage 
such matters. And also, outside of your own busi- 
ness, there are one or two subjects on which you are 
bound to have but one opinion. That roguery and 
lying are objectionable, and are instantly to be flogged 
out of the way whenever discovered ; — that covetous- 
ness and love of quarrelling are dangerous disposi- 
tions even in children, and deadly dispositions in 
men and nations ; — that in the end, the God of 
heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind 
people, and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel 
ones ; — on these general facts you are bound to have 
but one, and that a very strong, opinion. For the 
rest, respecting religious governments, sciences, arts, 
you will find that, on the whole, you can know 
NOTHING, — judge nothing; that the best you can do, 
even though you may be a well-educated person, is to 
be silent, and strive to be wiser every day, and to 
understand a little more of the thoughts of others, 
which so soon as you try to do honestly, you will 
discover that the thoughts even of the wisest are very 
little more than pertinent questions. To put the 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 67 

difficulty into a clear shape, and exhibit to you the 
grounds for ///decision, that is all they can generally 
do for you ! — and well for them and for us, if indeed 
they are able " to mix the music with our thoughts, 
and sadden us \Vith heavenly doubts." This wTiter, 
from whom I have been reading to you, is not among 
the first or wisest : he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, 
and therefore it is easy to find out his full meaning, 
but with the greater men, you cannot fathom their 
meaning ; they do not even wholly measure it them- 
selves, — it is so wide. Suppose I had asked you, 
for instance, to seek for Shakespeare^s opinion, in- 
stead of Milton's, on this matter of Church authority > 
— or for Dante's? Have any of you, at this instant, 
the least idea what either thought about it? Have 
you ever balanced the scene with the bishops in 
Richard III. against the character of Cranmer? the 
description of St. Francis and St. Dominic against 
that of him who made Virgil wonder to gaze upon 
him, — " disteso, tanto vilmente, nelP eterno esilio ; " 
or of him whom Dante stood beside, '* come 1 frate 
che confessa lo perfido assassin ? " 1 Shakespeare and 
Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I pre- 
sume ! They were both in the midst of the; main 
struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers. 
They had an opinion, we may guess? But where is 
it? Bring it into court! Put Shakespeare's or 
Dante's creed into articles, and send that up into the 
Ecclesiastical Courts ! 

26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many 
and many a day, to come at the real purposes and 

^ Inf. xix. 71 ; xxxiii. 117. 



68 SESAME AND LILIES. 

teaching of these great men ; but a very little honest 
study of them will enable you to perceive that what 
you took for your own ''judgment" was mere chance 
prejudice, and drifted, helpless, entangled weed of 
castaway thought: nay, you will see 'that most men's 
minds are indeed little better than rough heath wilder- 
ness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, partly 
overgrown with pestilent brakes and venomous wind- 
sown herbage of evil surmise ; that the first thing you 
have to do for them, and yourself, is eagerly and 
scornfully to set fire to tJiis ; burn all the jungle into 
wholesome ash-heaps, and then plough and sow. All 
the true literary work before you, for life, must begin 
with obedience to that order, " Break up your fallow 
ground, and sow not a7nong thorns.^'' 

27. II. Having then faithfully listened to the great 
teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you 
have yet this higher advance to make ; — you have to 
enter into their Hearts. As you go to them first for 
clear sight, so you must stay with them that you may 
share at last their just and mighty Passion. Passion, 
or "sensation." I am not afraid of the word; still 
less of the thing. You have heard many outcries 
against sensation lately ; but, I can tell you, it is not 
less sensation we want, but more. The ennobling 
difference between one man and another, — between 
one animal and another, — is precisely in this, that 
one feels more than another. If we were sponges, 
perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us ; if 
we were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be cut 
in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensation 
might not be good for us. But, being human crea- 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 69 

tures, // is good for us : nay, we are only human in so 
far as we are sensitive, and our honor is precisely in 
proportion to our passion. 

28. You know I said of that great and pure society 
of the dead, that it would allow "no vain or vulgar 
person to enter there.''' What do you think I meant 
by a " vulgar " person ? What do you yourselves mean 
by '' vulgarity"? You will find it a fruitful subject of 
thought ; but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies 
in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity 
is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of 
body and mind ; but in true inbred vulgarity, there 
is a deathful callousness, which, in extremity, be- 
comes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, 
without fear, without pleasure, without horror, and 
without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead 
heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened con- 
science, that men become vulgar; they are forever 
vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are incapable 
of sympathy, — of quick understanding, — of all 
that, in deep insistence on the common, but most 
accurate term, may be called the " tacf or touch- 
faculty of body and soul : that tact which the Mimosa 
has in trees, which the pure woman has above all 
creatures ; — fineness and fulness of sensation, be- 
yond reason ; — the guide and sanctifier of reason 
itself. Reason can but determine what is true : — it 
is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can 
recognize what God has made good. 

29. We come then to that great concourse of the 
Dead, not merely to know from them what is True, 
but chiefly to feel with them what is Righteous. 



70 SESAME AND LILIES. 

Now, to feel with them, we must be like them ; and 
none of us can become that without pains. As the 
true knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge, 
— not the first thought that comes, — so the true 
passion is disciplined and tested passion — not the 
first passion that comes. The first that come are the 
vain, the false, the treacherous ; if you yield to them 
they will lead you wildly and far, in vain pursuit, in 
hollow enthusiasm, till you have no true purpose and 
no true passion left. Not that any feeling possible 
to humanity is in itself wrong, but only wrong when 
undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force and justice ; 
it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry cause. 
There is a mean wonder as of a child who sees a 
juggler tossing golden balls, and this is base, if you 
will. But do you think that the wonder is ignoble, 
or the sensation less, with which every human soul 
is called to watch the golden balls of heaven tossed 
through the night by the Hand that made them? 
There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening a 
forbidden door, or a servant prying into her master's 
business ; — and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the 
front of danger, the source of the great river beyond 
the sand — the place of the great continents beyond 
the sea ; — a nobler curiosity still, which questions 
of the source of the River of Life, and of the space of 
the Continent of Heaven, — things which " the angels 
desire to look into." So the anxiety is ignoble, with 
which you linger over the course and catastrophe of 
an idle tale ; but do you think the anxiety is less, or 
greater, with which you watch, or ought to watch, the 
dealings of fate and destiny with the life of an ago- 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 71 

nized nation? Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfishness, 
minuteness, of your sensation that you have to de- 
plore in England at this day ; — sensation which 
spends itself in bouquets and speeches, in revellings 
and junketings, in sham fights and gay puppet shows, 
while you can look on and see noble nations mur- 
dered, man by man, woman by w'oman, child by 
child, without an effort or a tear. 

30. I said "minuteness" and "selfishness" of 
sensation, but in a word, I ought to have said " injus- 
tice" or "unrighteousness" of sensation. For as in 
nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a 
vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such 
nations have been) better to be discerned from a 
mob, than in this, — that their feelings are constant 
and just, results of due contemplation and of equal 
thought. You can talk a mob into anything; its 
feelings may be — usually are — on the whole gen- 
erous and right ; but it has no foundation for them, 
no hold of them ; you may tease or tickle it into any, 
at your pleasure ; it thinks by infection, for the most 
part, catching a passion like a cold, and there is 
nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, 
when the fit is on ; — nothing so great but it will forget 
in an hour, wdien the fit is past. But a gentleman^s, 
or a gentle nation's, passions are just, measured, and 
continuous. A great nation, for instance, does not 
spend its entire national wits for a couple of months 
in weighing evidence of a single ruffian's having 
done a single murder, and for a couple of years see 
its own children murder each other by their thousands 
or tens of thousands a day, considering only what the 



72 SESAME AND LILIES. 

effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and caring 
nowise to determine which side of battle is in the 
wrong. Neither does a great nation send its poor 
little boys to jail for stealing six walnuts, and allow 
its bankrupts to steal their hundreds or thousands 
with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor men's 
savings, to close their doors "under circumstances 
over which they have no control," with a "by your 
leave ; " and large landed estates to be bought by 
men who have made their money by going with 
armed steamers up and down the China Seas, selling 
opium at the cannon's mouth, and altering, for the 
benefit of the foreign nation, the common highway- 
man's demand of "your money or your life," into 
that of " your money aiid your life." Neither does a 
great nation allow the lives of its innocent poor to be 
parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted out of 
them by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence a 
life extra per week to its landlords ; ^ and then debate, 
with drivelling tears, and diabolical sympathies, 
whether it ought not piously to save, and nursingly 
cherish, the lives of its murderers. Also, a great 
nation having made up its mind that hanging is quite 
the wholesomest process for its homicides in general, 
can yet with mercy distinguish between the degrees 
of guilt in homicides, and does not yelp like a pack 
of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood track of an 
unhappy crazed boy, or gray-haired clodpate Othello, 
" perplexed i' the extreme," at the very moment that 
it is sending a Minister of the Crown to make polite 
speeches to a man who is bayoneting young girls in 

1 See note (II 50) at end of Lecture. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 73 

their father's sight, and kilHng noble youths in cool 
blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in 
spring. And, lastly, a great nation does not mock 
Heaven and its Powers, by pretending belief in a 
revelation which asserts the love of money to be the 
root of all evil, and delaring, at the same time, that 
it is actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief 
national deeds and measures, by no other love. 

31. My friends, I do not know why any of us 
should talk about reading. We want some sharper 
discipline than that of reading ; but, at "all events, be 
assured, we cannot read. No reading is possible for 
a people with its mind in this state. No sentence of 
any great writer is intelligible to them. It is simply 
and sternly impossible for the English public, at this 
moment, to understand any thoughtful writing, — so 
incapable of thought has it become in its insanity of 
avarice. Happily, our disease is, as yet, little worse 
than this incapacity of thought ; it is not corruption 
of the inner nature ; we ring true still, when anything 
strikes home to us ; and though the idea that every- 
thing should " pay " has infected our every purpose so 
deeply, that even when we would play the good 
Samaritan, we never take out our twopence and give 
them to the host, without saying, "When I come 
again, thou shalt give me fourpence," there is a capa- 
city of noble passion left in our hearts' core. We show 
it in our work — in our war, — even in those unjust 
domestic affections which make us furious at a small 
private wrong, while we*are polite to a boundless 
public one : we are still industrious to the last hour 
of the day, though we add the gambler's fury to the 



74 SESAME AND LILIES. 

laborer's patience ; we are still brave to the death, 
though incapable of discerning true cause lor battle, 
and are still true in affection to our own flesh, to the 
death, as the sea-monsters are, and the rock-eagles. 
And there is hope for a nation while this can be still 
said of it. As long as it holds its life in its hand, 
ready to give it for its honor (though a foolish honor) , 
for its love (though a selfish love) , and for its business 
(though a base business), there is hope for it. But 
hope only ; for this instinctive, reckless virtue cannot 
last. No nation can last, which has made a mob of 
itself, however generous at heart. It must disci- 
pline its passions, and direct them, or they will dis- 
cipline it, one day, with scorpion whips. Above all, 
a nation cannot last as a money-making mob : it 
cannot with impunity, — it cannot with existence, — 
go on despising literature, despising science, despis- 
ing art, despising nature, despising compassion, and 
concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think these 
are harsh or wild words ? Have patience with me 
but a little longer. I will prove their truth to you, 
clause by clause. 

32. I. I say first we have despised literature. 
What do we, as a nation, care about books? How 
much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, 
public or private, as compared with what we spend on 
our horses ? If a man spends lavishly on his library, 
you call him mad — a biblio-maniac. But you never 
call any one a horse-maniac, though men ruin them- 
selves every day by their horses, and you do not hear 
of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to 
go lower still, how much do you think the contents 



OF KIXGS' TREASURIES. 75 

of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public 
and private, would fetch, as compared with the con- 
tents of its wine-cellars? What position would its 
expenditure on literature take, as compared with its 
expenditure on luxurious eating ? We talk of food 
for the mind, as of food for the body : now a good 
book contains such food inexhaustibly; it is a provis- 
ion for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long 
most people would look at the best book before they 
would give the price of a large turbot for it ! Though 
there have been men who have pinched their stom- 
achs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose 
libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, 
than most men's dinners are. We are few of us put 
to such trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, a precious 
thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won 
by work or economy ; and if public hbraries were 
half as costly as pubhc dinners, or books cost the 
tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men 
and women might sometimes suspect there was good 
in readmg, as well as in munching and sparkling; 
whereas the very cheapness of literature is making 
even wise people forget that if a book is worth read- 
ing, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything 
which is not worth imich ; nor is it servicable, until 
it has been read, and reread, and loved, and loved 
again ; and marked, so that you can refer to the 
passages you want in it, as a soldier can seize the 
weapon he needs in an armory, or a housewife bring 
the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour 
is good : but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we 
would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must 



76 SESAME AND LILIES. 

be poor indeed which, once in their lives, cannot, for 
such multipHable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. 
We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and 
foolish enough to thumb each other^s books out of 
circulating libraries ! 

33. II. I say we have despised science. *'What!" 
(you exclaim) "are we not foremost in all discovery, 
and is not the whole world giddy by reason, or unrea- 
son, of our inventions ?" Yes; but do you suppose 
that is national work ? That work is all done in spite of 
the nation ; by private people^s zeal and money. We 
are glad enough, indeed, to make our profit of science ; 
we snap up anything in the way of a scientific bone 
that has meat on it, eagerly enough ; but if the scien- 
tific man comes for a bone or a crust to us^ that is 
another story. What have we publicly done for 
science? We are obliged to know what o'clock it is, 
for the safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for 
an observatory ; and we allow ourselves, in the person 
of our Parliament, to be annually tormented into doing 
something, in a slovenly way, for the British Museum ; 
sullenly apprehending that to be a place for keeping 
stuffed birds in, to amuse our children. If anybody 
will pay for their own telescope, and resolve another 
nebula, we cackle over the discernment as if it were 
our own ; if one in ten thousand of our hunting 
squi"es suddenly perceives that the earth was indeed 
made to be something else than a portion for foxes, 
and burrows in it himself, and tells us where the gold 
is, and where the coals, we understand that there is 
some use in that ; and very properly knight him : but 
is the accident of his having found out how to employ 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. ^^ 

himself usefully any credit to its ? (The negation of 
such discovery among his brother squires may per- 
haps be some <^/j-credit to us, if we would consider of 
it.) But if you doubt these generalities, here is one 
fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of our love 
of science. Two years ago there was a collection of 
the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria ; the 
best in existence, containing many specimens unique 
for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a 
species (a whole kingdom of unknown living crea- 
tures being announced by that fossil) . This collection 
of which the mere market worth, among private 
buyers, would probably have been some thousand or 
twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English 
nation for seven hundred : but we would not give 
seven hundred, and the whole series would have been 
in the Munich museum at this moment, if Professor 
Oweni j^ad not with loss of his own time, and patient 
tormenting of the British public in person of its rep- 
resentatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds at 
once, and himself become answerable for the other 
three ! which the said public will doubtless pay him 
eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the 
matter all the while ; only always ready to cackle if 
any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg of you, arith- 
metically, what this fact means. Your annual ex- 
penditure for public purposes (a third of it for military 
apparatus) is at least 50 millions. Now 700/. is to 
50,000,000/. roughly, as seven pence to two thousand 

1 1 state this fact without Professor Owen's permission : which of 
course he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it ; but I 
consider it so important that the pubhc should be aware of the fact, 
that I do what seems to me right, though rude. 



78 SESAME AND LILIES. 

pounds. Suppose then, a gentleman of unknown 
income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured from 
the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his 
parkwalls and footmen only, professes himself fond of 
science ; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to 
tell him that an unique collection of fossils, giving 
clue to a new era of creation, is to be had for the sum 
of seven pence sterling ; and that the gentleman who 
is fond of science, and spends two thousand a year on 
his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting 
several months, " Well ! Til give you four pence for 
them, if you will be answerable for the extra three 
pence yourself, till next year ! " 

34. III. I say you have despised Art ! " What !" 
you again answer, "have we not Art exhibitions, 
miles long ? and do we not pay thousands of pounds 
for single pictures ? and have we not Art schools and 
institutions, more than ever nation had before ? " Yes, 
truly, but all that is for the sake of the shop. You 
would fain sell canvas as well as coals, and crockery as 
well as iron ; you would take every other nation's bread 
out of its mouth if you could \^ not being able to do 
that, your ideal of life is to stand in the thoroughfares 
of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, screaming to 
every passer-by, " What d'ye lack t " You know noth- 
ing of your own faculties or circumstances ; you fancy 
that, among your damp, flat, fat fields of clay, you 
can have as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman among 



1 That was our real idea of " Free-Trade " — " All the trade to my- 
self." You find now that by " competition '' other people can manage 
to sell something as well as you — and now we call for protection again. 
Wretches ! 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 79 

his bronzed vines, or the Itahan under his volcanic 
cUffs ; — that Art may be learned as book-keeping is, 
and when learned, will give you more books to keep. 
You care for pictures, absolutely, no more than you 
do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. There is 
always room on the wall for the bills to be read, — 
never for the pictures to be seen. You do not know 
what pictures you have (by repute) in the country, 
nor whether they are false or true, nor whether they 
are taken care of or not ; in foreign countries, you 
calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the world 
rotting in abandoned wreck — (and, in Venice, with 
the Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the palaces 
containing them) , and if you heard that all the Titians 
in Europe were made into sand-bags to-morrow on the 
Austrian forts, it would not trouble you so much as 
the chance of a brace or two of game less in your own 
bags in a day^s shooting. That is your national love 
of Art. 

35. IV. You have despised nature; that is to 
say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural 
scenery. The French revolutionists made stables of 
the cathedrals of France ; you have made racecourses 
of the cathedrals of the earth. Your 07ie conception 
of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages round 
their aisles, and eat off their altars. ^ You have put a 
railroad bridge over the fall of Schafifhausen. You 
have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by TelFs chapel ; 

1 I meant that the beautiful places of the world — Switzerland, Italy, 
South Germany, and so on — are, indeed, the truest cathedrals — 
places to be reverent in, and to worship' in ; and that we only care to 
drive through them : and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. 



8o SESAME AND LILIES. 

you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of 
Geneva ; there is not a quiet valley in England that 
you have not filled with bellowing fire ; there is no 
particle left of English land which you have not tram- 
pled coal ashes into — nor any foreign city in which 
the spread of your presence is not marked among its 
fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming 
white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops : 
the Alps themselves, which your own poets used to 
love so reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in 
a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb, and 
slide down again, with "shrieks of delight." When 
you are past shrieking, having no human artic- 
ulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the 
-quietude of their valleys with gunpowder blasts, and 
rush home, red with cutaneous eruption of conceit, 
and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfac- 
tion. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles 
1 have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner 
significance of them, are the English mobs in the 
valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing 
rusty howitzers ; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich 
expressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the 
vine, by assembling in knots in the "towers of the 
vineyards," and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols 
from morning till evening. It is pitiful to have dim 
conceptions of duty ; more pitiful, it seems to me, to 
have conceptions like these, of mirth. 

36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is 
no need of words of mine for proof of this. 1 will 
merely print one of the newspaper paragraphs which 
I am in the habit of cutting out and throwing into my 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 8i 

store-drawer ; here is one from a Daily Telegraph of 
an early date this year ; date which though by me 
carelessly left unmarked, is easily discoverable, for 
on the back of the slip, there is the announcement 
that '' yesterday the seventh of the special services of 
this year was performed by the Bishop of Ripon in 
St. PauPs ; " and there is a pretty piece of modern 
political economy besides, worth preserving note of, 
I think, so I print it in the note below. ^ But my 
business is with the main paragraph, relating one of 
such facts as happen now daily, which, by chance, 
has taken a form in which it came before the coroner. 
I will print the paragraph in red.^ Be sure, the facts 
themselves are written in that color, in a book which 
we shall all of us, literate or illiterate, have to read 
our page of, some day. 

*' An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, 
deputy coroner, at the White Horse Tavern, Christ 
Church, Spitalfields, respecting the death of Michael 
Collins, aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a miserable- 
looking woman, said that she lived with the deceased 
and his son in a room at 2, Cobb's court, Christ 
Church. Deceased was a 'translator' of boots. 
Witness went out and bought old boots ; deceased 

1 It is announced that an arrangement has been concluded between 
the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Credit for the payment of 
the eleven millions which the State has to pay to the National Bank 
by the 14th inst. This sum will be raised as follows: — The eleven 
commercial members of the committee of the Bank of Credit will each 
borrow a miUion of florins for three months of this bank, which will 
accept their bills, which again will be discounted by the National 
Bank. By this arrangement the National Bank will itself furnish the 
funds with which it will be paid. 

2 The following extract was printed in red in the English edition. 



82 SESAME AND LILIES, 

and his son made them into good ones, and then 
witness sold them for what she could get at the 
shops, which was very little indeed. Deceased and 
his son used to work night and day to try and get a 
little bread and tea, and pay for the room {2s. a 
week), so as to keep the home together. On Friday 
night week deceased got up from his bench and 
began to shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, 
' Somebody else must finish them when I am gone, 
for I can do no more.' There was no fire, and he 
said, * I would be better if I was warm.' Witness 
therefore took two pairs of translated boots^ to sell at 
the shop, but she could only get id^d. for the two 
pairs, for the people at the shop said, ' We must have 
our profit.' Witness got 141b. of coal, and a little 
tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to 
make the ' translations,' to get money, but deceased 
died on Saturday morning. The family never had 
enough to eat. — Coroner : ' It seems to me deplora- 
ble that you did not go into the workhouse.' — Wit- 
ness : * We wanted the comforts of our little home.' 
A juror asked what the comforts were, for he only 
saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the 
windows of which were broken. The witness began 
to cry, and said that they had a quilt and other little 
things. The deceased said he never would go into 
the workhouse. In summer, when the season was 
good, they sometimes made as much as \os. profit in 
the week. They then always saved towards the next 

1 One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the 
good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear 
no *' translated " articles of dress. See the preface. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. ^Z 

week, which was generally a bad one. In winter 
they made not half so much. For three years they 
had been getting from bad to worse. — Cornelius 
Collins said that he had assisted his father since 
1847. They used to work so far into the night that 
both nearly lost their eyesight. Witness now had a 
him over his eyes. Five years ago deceased applied 
to the parish for aid. The relieving officer gave him 
a 41b loaf, and told him if he came again he should 
*get the stones.' 1 That disgusted deceased, and he 
would have nothing to do with them since. They 
got worse and worse until last Friday week, when 

1 This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curiously 
coincident in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may 
remember. It may perhaps be well to preserve beside this paragraph 
another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the Morning Post, of 
about a parallel date, Friday, March loth, 1865: — *'The salons of 

Mme. C , who did the honors with clever imitative grace and 

elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts — 
in fact, with the same male company as one meets at the parties of the 
Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English 
peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy 
the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the 
supper tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That 
your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian 
demimonde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to all 
the guests (about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, 
Johannisberg, Laffitte, Tokay, and Champagne of the finest vintages 
were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After supper 
dancing was resumed with increased animation, and the ball terminated 
with a chain diabolique and a cancan d"* e7z/er dii seven in the morning, 
(Morning-service — * Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the opening 
eyelids of the Morn. — ') Here is the menu: — '' Consoimne de 
volaille a la Bagration ; 16 hors-d^oeiivres varies. Bouchees a la 
Talleyrand. Saumons /voids, satcce Ravigote. Filets de boeuf ett 
Belleviie, timbales milanaises chaiidfroid de gibier. Dijides truffles. 
Fates de/oies gras, buissons d''ecrevisses, salades venetienties, gelees 
blanches aux fruits, gateaux 7na7tcini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fro- 
ntages, glacis. Afianas. Dessert.'''''' 



84 SESAME AND LILIES. 

they had not even a halfpenny to buy a candle. 
Deceased then lay down on the straw, and said he 
could not live till morning. — A juror : ' You are 
dying of starvation yourself, and you ought to go 
into the house until the summer.' — Witness : * If we 
went in we should die. When we come out in the 
summer we should be like people dropped from the 
sky. No one would know us, and we would not have 
even a room. I could work now if I had food, for 
my sight would get better.' Dr. G. P. Walker said 
deceased died from syncope, from exhaustion from 
want of food. The deceased had had no bedclothes. 
For four months he had had nothing but bread to 
eat. There was not a particle of fat in the body. 
There was no disease, but if there had been medical 
attendance, he might have survived the syncope or 
fainting. The coroner having remarked upon the 
painful nature of the case, the jury returned the fol- 
lowing verdict, ' That deceased died from exhaustion 
from want of food and the common necessaries of 
life ; also through want of medical aid.' " 

37. *' Why would witness not go into the work- 
house?" you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a 
prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have 
not ; for of course every one who takes a pension 
from Government goes into the workhouse on a grand 
scale : only the workhouses for the rich do not in- 
volve the idea of work, and should be called play- 
houses. But the poor like to die independently, it 
appears ; perhaps if we made the play-houses for 
them pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their 
pensions at home, and allowed them a little introduc- 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 85 

tory peculation with the public money, their minds 
might be reconciled to it. jMeantime, here are the 
facts : we make our relief either so insulting to them, 
or so painful, that they rather die than take it at our 
hands ; or, for third alternative, we leave them so 
untaught and foolish that they starve like brute crea- 
tures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, or 
what to ask. I say, you despise compassion ; if you 
did not, such a newspaper paragraph would be as 
impossible in a Christian country as a deliberate 
assassination permitted in its public streets. ^ " Chris- 

1 I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall Mall Gazette 
established ; for the power of the press in the hands of highly-educated 
men, in independent position, and of honest purpose, may indeed 
become all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor 
will therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my 
respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its 
third number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the 
intense wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who has 
taken a false turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, regard- 
less of consequences. It contained at the end this notable passage : — 

"The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, and the 
bedsteads and blankets. of affliction, are the very utmost that the law 
ought to give to outcasts merely as oidcasts.^^ I merely put beside 
this expression of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of 
the message which Isaiah was ordered to " lift up his voice like a 
trumpet" in declaring to the gentlemen of his day: "Ye fast for 
strife, and to smite with the 'fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast 
that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou 
bring the poor t/tat are cast out (margin 'afflicted') to /^jj/ house." 
The falsehood on which the writer had mentally founded himself, as 
previously stated by him, was this: " To confound the functions of the 
dispensers of the poor-rates w^ith those of the dispensers of a charitable 
institution is a great and pernicious error." This sentence is so accu- 
rately and exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed 
in our minds before we can deal with any existing problem of national 
distress. " To understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the 
almoners of the nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness 
and freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that possible to 



86 SESAME AND LILIES. 

tian," did I say? Alas, if we were but wholesomely 
un-Christian, it would be impossible : it is our ima- 
ginary Christianity that helps us to commit these 
crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our faith, for 
the lewd sensation of it ; dressing it up, like every- 
thing else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of 
the organ and aisle, of dawn-service and twilight- 
revival — the Christianity which we do not fear to 
mix the mockery of, pictorially, with our play about 
the devil, in our Satanellas, — Roberts, — Fausts, 
chanting hymns through traceried windows for back- 
ground effect, and artistically modulating the " Dio" 
through variation on variation of mimicked prayer: 
(while we distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit 
of uncultivated swearers, upon what we suppose to 
be the signification of the Third Commandment ;) — 
this gas-lighted, and gas-inspired, Christianity, we 
are triumphant in, and draw back the hem of our 
robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute it. 
But to do a piece of common Christian righteousness 
in a plain English word or deed ; to make Christian 
law any rule of life, and found one National act or 
hope thereon, — we know too well what our faith 
comes to for that ! You might sooner get lightning 
out of incense smoke than true action or passion out 
of your modern English religion. You had better 
get rid of the smoke, and the organ pipes, both : 
leave them, and the Gothic windows, and the painted 
glass, to the property man ; give up your carburetted 

individual charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be 
supposed greater than those of any single person, is the foundation 
of all law respecting pauperism." 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 87 

hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look 
after Lazarus at the door-step. For there is a tme 
Church wherever one hand meets another helpfully, 
and that is the only holy or Mother Church which 
ever was, or ever shall be. 

38. All these pleasures, then, and all these virtues, 
I repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, 
men among you who do not ; by whose w^ork, by 
whose strength, by whose life, by whose death, you 
live, and never thank them. Your wealth, your 
amusement, your pride, w^ould all be alike impossible, 
but for those whom you scorn or forget. The police- 
man, who is walking up and down the black lane all 
night to watch the guilt you have created there, and 
may have his brains beaten out and be maimed for 
life at any moment, and never be thanked ; the sailor 
wrestling wdth the sea's rage ; the quiet student por- 
ing over his book or his vial ; the common worker, 
without praise, and nearly without bread, fulfilling 
his task as your horses drag your carts, hopeless, 
and spurned of all : these are the men by whom Eng- 
land lives ; but they are not the nation ; they are only 
the body and nervous force of it, acting still from old 
habit in convulsive perseverance, while the mind is 
gone. Our National mind and purpose are to be 
amused ; our National religion, the performance of 
church ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truths 
(or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at work, while 
we amuse ourselves ; and the necessity for this 
amusement is fastening on us as a feverous disease of 
parched throat and wandering eyes — senseless, dis- 
solute, merciless. 



SS SESAME AND LILIES. 

39. When men are rightly occupied, their amuse- 
ment grows out of their work, as the color-petals out 
of a fruitful flower ; — when they are faithfully helpful 
and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, 
deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the 
natural pulse to the body. But now, having no true 
business, we pour our whole masculine energy into 
the false business of money-making ; and having no 
true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed 
up for us to play with, not innocently, as children 
with dolls, but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous 
Jews with their pictures on cavern walls, which men 
had to dig to detect. The justice we do not execute, 
we mimic in the novel and on the stage ; for the 
beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the meta- 
morphosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature 
of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of so7jie 
kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with 
our fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept 
with them, we gloat over the pathos of the police 
court, and gather the night-dew of the grave. 

40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance 
of these things ; the facts are frightful enough ; — the 
measure of national fault involved in them is perhaps 
not as great as it would at first seem. We permit, or 
cause, thousands of deaths daily, but we mean no 
harm ; we set fire to houses, and ravage peasants' 
fields ; yet we should be sorry to find we had 
injured anybody. We are still kind at heart ; 
still capable of virtue, but only as children are. 
Chalmers, at the end of his long life, having had 
much power with the public, being plagued in some 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 89 

serious matter by a reference to *' public opinion," 
uttered the impatient exclamation, *' The public is 
just a great baby ! " And the reason that I have 
allowed all these graver subjects of thought to mix 
themselves up with an inquiry into methods of read- 
ing, is that, the more I see of our national faults or 
miseries, the more they resolve themselves into con- 
ditions of childish illiterateness, and want of educa- 
tion in the most ordinary habits of thought. It is, 
I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, not dulness of 
brain, which w^e have to lament ; but an unreachable 
schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from the true 
schoolboy's in its incapacity of being helped, because 
it acknowledges no master. 

41. There is a curious type of us given in one of 
the lovely, neglected works of the last of our great 
painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale church- 
yard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and 
folded morning sky beyond. And unmindful alike of 
these, and of the dead who have left these for other 
valleys and for other skies, a group of schoolboys 
have piled their little books upon a grave, to strike 
them off with stones. So do we play with the words 
of the dead that would teach us, and strike them far 
from us with our bitter, reckless will, little thinking 
that those leaves which the wind scatters had oeen 
piled, not only upon a gravestone, but upon the seal 
of an enchanted vault — nay, the gate of a great city 
of sleeping kings, who would awake for us, and walk 
with us, if we knew but how to call them by their 
names. How often, even if we lift the marble en- 
trance gate, do we but wander among those old kings 



90 SESAME AND LILIES. 

in their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and 
stir the crowns on their foreheads ; and still they are 
silent to us, and seem but a dusty imagery ; because 
we know not the incantation of the heart that would 
wake them ; — which, if they once heard, they would 
start up to meet us in their power of long ago, nar- 
rowly to look upon us, and consider us ; and, as the 
fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, saying, 
*' Art thou also become weak as we — art thou also 
become one of us? " so would these kings, with their 
undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, "Art 
thou also become pure and mighty of heart as we? 
art thou also become one of us ? " 

42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnani- 
mous ^' — to be this, is indeed to be great in life ; to 
become this increasingly, is, indeed, to ''advance in 
life," — in life itself — not in the trappings of it. My 
friends, do you remember that old Scythian custom, 
when the head of a house died ? How he was dressed 
in his finest dress, and set in his chariot, and carried 
about to his friends' houses ; and each of them placed 
him at his table's head, and all feasted in his pres- 
ence ? Suppose it were offered to you, in plain 
words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you 
should gain this Scythian honor, gradually, while you 
yet thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were 
this: " You shall die slowly; your blood shall daily 
grow cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at last 
only as a rusted group of iron valves. Your life shall 
fade from you, and sink through the earth into the 
ice of Caina ; but, day by day, your body shall be 
dressed more gayly, and set in higher chariots, and 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 9 1 

have more orders on its breast — crowns on its head, 
if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and shout 
round it, crowd after it up and down the streets ; 
build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads 
all the night long ; your soul shall stay enough within 
it to know what they do, and feel the weight of the 
golden dress on its shoulders, and the furrow of 
the crown-edge on the skull ; — no more. Would you 
take the offer, verbally made by the death-angel? 
Would the meanest among us take it, think you? 
Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, every one of 
us, in a measure ; many of us grasp at it in its fulness 
of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to 
advance in life without knowing what life is ; who 
means only that he is to get more horses, and more 
footmen, and more fortune, and more public honor, 
and — not more personal soul. He only is advancing 
in life, whose heart is getting softer, whose blood 
warmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering 
into Living 1 peace. And the men who have this 
life in them are the true lords or kings of the earth — 
they, and they only. All other kingships, so far as 
they are true, are only the practical issue and expres- 
sion of theirs ; if less than this, they are either 
dramatic royalties, — costly shows, with real jewels 
instead of tinsel — the toys of nations; or else, they 
are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere 
active and practical issue of national folly ; for which 
reason I have said of them elsewhere, "Visible 
governments are the toys of some nations, the diseases 
of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more." 

^ " TO 6e t^povYjfxa toO Tri'eu/uiaTOS ^(orj >cal e t p ij v rj," 



92 SESAME AND LILIES. 

43. But I have no words for the wonder with which 
I hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among thought- 
ful men, as if governed nations were a personal 
property, and might be bought and sold, or otherwise 
acquired, as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to 
feed, and whose fleece he was to gather ; as if 
Achilles' indignant epithet of base kings, "people- 
eating," were the constant and proper title of all 
monarchs ; and enlargement of a king's dominion 
meant the same thing as the increase of a private 
man's estate ! Kings who think so, however power- 
ful, can no more be the true kings of the nation than 
gad-flies are the kings of a horse ; they suck it, and 
may drive it wild, but do not guide it. They, and 
their courts, and their armies are, if one could see 
clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, with 
bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered, 
trumpeting in the summer air ; the twilight being, 
perhaps, sometimes fairer, but hardly more whole- 
some, for its glittering mists of midge companies. 
The true kings, meanwhile, rule quietly, if at all, and 
hate ruling ; too many of them make " il gran refiuto ; " 
and if they do not, the mob, as soon as they are likely 
to become useful to it, is pretty sure to make its 
" gran refiuto " of theui. 

44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, 
some day, if ever day comes when he will estimate 
his dominion by \\\^ force of it, — not the geographi- 
cal boundaries. It matters very little whether Trent 
cuts you a cantel out here, or Rhine rounds you a 
castle less there. But it does matter to you, king of 
men, whether you can verily say to this man, " Go," 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 93 

and he goeth ; and to another, ** Come," and he 
Cometh. Whether you can turn your people as you 
can Trent — and where it is that you bid them come, 
and where go. It matters to you, king of men, 
whether your people hate you, and die by you, or 
love you, and live by you. You may measure your 
dominion by multitudes better than by miles ; and 
count degrees of love-latitude, not from, but to, a 
wonderfully warm and infinite equator. 

45. Measure! nay you cannot measure. Who 
shall measure the difference between the power of 
those who " do and teach," and who are greatest in 
the kingdoms of earth, as of heaven — and the power 
of those who undo, and consume — whose power, at 
the fullest, is only the power of the moth and the 
rust ? Strange ! to think how the Moth-kings lay up 
treasures for the moth, and the Rust-kings, who are 
to their people's strength as rust to armor, lay up 
treasures for the rust ; and the Robber-kings, treas- 
ures for the robber; but how few kings have ever 
laid up treasures that needed no guarding — treasures 
of which, the more thieves there were, the better ! 
Broidered robe, only to be rent — helm and sword, 
only to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to be 
scattered — there have been three kinds of kings 
who have gathered these. Suppose there ever should 
arise a Fourth order of kings, who had read, in some 
obscure writing of long ago, that there was a Fourth 
kind of treasure, which the jewel and gold could not 
equal, neither should it be valued with pure gold. A 
web more fair in the weaving by Athena's shuttle ; 
an armor forged in diviner fire by Vulcanian force — 



94 SESAME AND LILIES. 

a gold only to be mined in the sun^s red heart, where 
he sets over the Delphian cliffs ; — deep-pictured 
tissue, impenetrable armor, potable gold ! — the three 
great Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still 
calling to us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, to 
lead us, if we would, with their winged power, and 
guide us, with their inescapable eyes, by the path 
which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye 
has not seen ! Suppose kings should ever arise, who 
heard and believed this word, and at last gathered 
and brought forth treasures of — Wisdom — for their 
people? 

46. Think what an amazing business that would 
be ! How inconceivable, in the state of our present 
national wisdom. That we should bring up our 
peasants to a book exercise instead of a bayonet 
exercise ! — organize, drill, maintain with pay, and 
good generalship, armies of thinkers, instead of 
armies of stabbers ! — find national amusement in 
reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds ; give prizes 
for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash 
on a target. What an absurd idea, it seems, put 
fairly in words, that the wealth of the capitalists of 
civilized nations should ever come to support litera- 
ture instead of war ! 

47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a 
single sentence out of the only book, properly to be 
called a book, that I have yet wTitten myself, the one 
that will stand (if anything stand) surest and longest 
of all work of mine. 

*'It is one very awful form of the operation of 
wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 95 

which supports unjust wars. Just wars do not need 
so much money to support them ; for most of the 
men who wage such, wage them gratis ; but for an 
unjust war, men^s bodies and souls have both to be 
bought ; and the best tools of war for them besides, 
which makes such war costly to the maximum ; not 
to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, 
between nations which have not grace nor honesty 
enough in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace 
of mind with; as, at present, France and England, 
purchasing of each other ten millions' sterling worth 
of consternation, annually (a remarkably light crop, 
half thorns and half aspen leaves, sown, reaped, and 
granaried by the ' science ' of the modern political 
economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). 
And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by 
pillage of the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, 
these loans are repaid by subsequent taxation of the 
people, who appear to have no will in the matter, the 
capitalists' will being the primary root of the war ; 
but its real root is the covetousness of the whole 
nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or 
justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, 
his own separate loss and punishment to each person." 
48. France and England literally, observe, buy 
panic of each other ; they pay, each of them, for ten 
thousand thousand pounds' w^orth of terror, a year. 
Now suppose, instead of buying these ten millions' 
worth of panic annually, they made up their minds to 
be at peace with each other, and buy ten millions' 
worth of knowledge annually ; and that each nation 
spend its ten thousand thousand pounds a year in 



96 SESAME AND LILIES. 

founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal 
museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might 
it not be better somewhat for both French and 
English ? 

49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. 
Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal 
or national libraries will be founded in every consider- 
able city, with a royal series of books in them ; the 
same series in every one of them, chosen books, the 
best in every kind, prepared for that national series 
in the most perfect way possible ; their text printed 
all on leaves of equal size, broad of margin, and 
divided into pleasant volumes, light in the hand, 
beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of 
binders^ work ; and that these great libraries will be 
accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times 
of the day and evening ; strict law being enforced for 
this cleanliness and quietness. 

I could shape for you other plans, for art-galleries, 
and for natural history galleries, and for many precious, 
many, it seems to me, needful, things ; but this book 
plan is the easiest and needfullest, and would prove a 
considerable tonic to what we call our British consti- 
tution, which has fallen dropsical of late, and has an 
evil thirst, and evil hunger, and wants healthier 
feeding. You have got its corn laws repealed for it ; 
try if you cannot get corn laws established for it, 
dealing in a better bread ; — bread made of that old 
enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens 
doors; — doors, not of robbers^ but of Kings' 
Treasuries. 

Friends, the treasuries of true kings are the streets 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 97 

of their cities ; and the gold they gather, which for 
others is as the mire of the streets, changes itself, for 
them and their people, into a crystalline pavement 
for evermore. 

50. Note to ^^P- — See the evidence in the 
Medical officer's report to the Privy Council, just 
published. There are suggestions in its preface 
which will make some stir among us, I fancy, respect- 
ing which let me note these points following : — 

There are two theories on the subject of land now 
abroad, and in contention ; both false. 

The first is that by Heavenly law, there have 
always existed, and must continue to exist, a certain 
number of hereditarily sacred persons, to whom the 
earth, air, and water of the world belong, as personal 
property ; of which earth, air, and water these per- 
sons may, at their pleasure, permit, or forbid, the rest 
of the human race to eat, to breathe, or to drink. 
This theory is not for many years longer tenable. 
The adverse theory is that a division of the land of 
the world among the mob of the world would imme- 
diately elevate the said mob into sacred personages ; 
that houses would then build themselves, and corn 
grow of itself; and that everybody would be able to 
live, without doing any work for his living. This 
theory would also be found highly untenable in 
practice. 

It will, however, require some rough experiments, 
and rougher catastrophes, even in this magnesium- 
lighted epoch, before the generality of persons will 
be convinced that no law concerning anything, least 
of all concerning land, for either holding or dividing 



98 SESAME AND LILIES. 

it, or renting it high, or renting it low, would be of 
the smallest ultimate use to the people, so long as the 
general contest for life, and for the means of life, 
remains one of mere brutal competition. That con- 
test, in an unprincipled nation, will take one deadly 
form or another, whatever laws you make for it. For 
instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law for 
England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits 
should be assigned to incomes, according to classes ; 
and that every nobleman^s income should be paid to 
him as a fixed salary or pension by the nation, and 
not squeezed by him in a variable sum, at discretion, 
out of the tenants of his land. But if you could get 
such a law passed to-morrow ; and if, which would be 
further necessary, you could fix the value of the 
assigned incomes by making a given weight of pure 
wheat-flour legal tender for a given sum, a twelve- 
month would not pass before another currency would 
have been tacitly established, and the power of accu- 
mulative wealth would have reasserted itself in some 
other article, or some imaginary sign. Forbid men 
to buy each other^s lives for sovereigns, and they will 
for shells, or slates. There is only one cure for pub- 
lic distress, — and that is public education, directed to 
make men thoughtful, merciful, and just. There are, 
indeed, many laws conceivable which would gradually 
better and strengthen the national temper; but, for 
the most part, they are such as the national temper 
must be much bettered before it would bear. A 
nation in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak 
child by backboards, but when it is old, it cannot 
that way straighten its crooked spine. 



OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 99 

And besides, the problem of land, at its worst, is 
a bye one ; distribute the earth as you will, the prin- 
cipal question remains inexorable, — Who is to dig 
it? Which of us, in brief w^ords, is to do the hard 
and dirty work for the rest — and for what pay? 
Who is to do the pleasant and clean w^ork, and for 
what pay? Who is to do no work, and for w^hat pay? 
And there are curious moral and religious questions 
connected with these. How far is it law^ful to suck 
a portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in 
order to put the abstracted psychical quantities to- 
gether, and make one very beautiful or ideal soul? 
If we had to deal with more blood, instead of spirit, 
and the thing might literally be done (as it has been 
done with infants before now) so that it w^ere possi- 
ble, by taking a certain quantity of blood from the 
arms of a given number of the mob, and putting it 
all into one person, to make a more azure-blooded 
gentleman of him, the thing would of course be man- 
aged ; but secretly, I should conceive. But now be- 
cause it is brain and soul that we abstract, not visible 
blood, it can be done quite openly ; and we live, we 
gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner of 
weasels ; that is to say, we keep a certain number of 
clowns digging and ditching, and generally stupefied, 
in order that we, being fed gratis, may have all the 
thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet there is a 
great deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and 
trained English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentle- 
man (much more a lady) is a great production ; a 
better production than most statues ; being beauti- 
fully colored as well as shaped, and plus all the 



lOO' SESAME AND LILIES. 

brains ; a glorious thing to look at, a wonderful thing 
to talk to ; and you cannot have it, any more than a 
pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of much con- 
tributed life. And it is, perhaps, better to build a 
beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or 
steeple, and more delightful to look up reverently to 
a creature far above us, than to a wall ; only the beau- 
tiful human creature will have some duties to do in 
return — duties of living belfry and rampart — of 
which presently. 



LECTURE II. — LILIES. 
OF queens' gardens. 

"Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the desert be made 
cheerful and bloom as the lily; and the barren places of Jordan 
shall run wild with wood." — Isaiah xxxv. i. (Septuagint.) 

51. It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the 
sequel of one previously given, that I should shortly 
state to you my general intention in both. The 
questions specially proposed to you in the first, 
namely. How and What to Read, rose out of a far 
deeper one, which it was my endeavor to make you 
propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to 
Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever 
advantages we possess in the present day in the 
diffusion of education and of literature, can only be 
rightly used by any of us when w^e have apprehended 
clearly what education is to lead to, and literature to 
teach. I wish you to see that both well-directed 
moral training and well-chosen reading lead to the 
possession of a power over the ill-guided and illiterate, 
which is, according to the measure of it, in the truest 
sense, kingly ; conferring indeed the purest kingship 
that can exist among men : too many other kingships 
(however distinguished by visible insignia or material 
power) being either spectral, or tyrannous ; — Spec- 
tral — that is to say, aspects and shadows only of 

lOI 



102 SESAME AND LILIES. 

royalty, hollow as death, and which only the *' Like- 
ness of a kingly crown have on ; " or else tyrannous 
— that is to say, substituting their own will for the 
law of justice and love by which all true kings rule. 

52. There is, then, I repeat — and as I want to leave 
this idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with 
it — only one pure kind of kingship ; an inevitable and 
eternal kind, crowned or not : the kingship, namely, 
which consists in a stronger moral state, and a truer 
thoughtful state, than that of others ; enabling you, 
therefore, to guide, or to raise them. Observe that 
word "State;" we have got into a .loose way of 
using it. It means literally the standing and stabil- 
ity of a thing ; and you have the full force of it in the 
derived word " statue " — " the immovable thing." A 
king's majesty or " state," then, and the right of his 
kingdom to be called a state, depends on the move- 
lessness of both : — without tremor, without quiver of 
balance ; established and enthroned upon a founda- 
tion of eternal law which nothing can alter nor over- 
throw. 

53. Believing that all literature and all education 
are only useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, 
beneficent, and therefore kingly, power — first, over 
ourselves, and, through ourselves, over all around us, 
I am now going to ask you to consider with me further, 
what special portion or kind of this royal authority, 
arising out of noble education, may rightly be pos- 
sessed by women ; and how far they also are called 
to a true queenly power. Not in their households 
merely, but over all within their sphere. And in 
what sense, if they rightly understood and exercised 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 103 

this royal or gracious influence, the order and beauty 
induced by such benignant power would justify us in 
speaking of the territories over which each of them 
reigned, as '' Queens' Gardens." 

54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a 
far deeper question, which — strange though this may 
seem — remains among many of us yet quite undecided, 
in spite of its infinite importance. 

We cannot determine what the queenly power of 
women should be, until we are agreed what their ordi- 
nary power should be. We cannot consider how edu- 
cation may fit them for any widely extending duty, until 
w^e are agreed what is their true constant duty. And 
there never was a time when wilder words were spoken, 
or more vain imagination permitted, respecting this 
question — quite vital to all social happiness. The 
relations of the w^omanly to the manly nature, their 
different capacities of intellect or of virtue, seem never 
to have been yet measured with entire consent. We 
hear of the mission and of the rights of Woman, as if 
these could ever be separate from the mission and the 
rights of Man ; — as if she and her lord were creatures of 
independent kind and of irreconcilable claim. This, 
at least, is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps 
even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus 
far what I hope to prove) — is the idea that woman 
is only the shadow and attendant image of her lord, 
owing him a thoughtless and servile obedience, and 
supported altogether in her weakness by the pre- 
eminence of his fortitude. 

This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respect- 
ing her who was made to be the helpmate of man. As 



I04 SESAME AND LILIES, 

if he could be helped effectively by a shadow, or 
worthily by a slave ! 

55. Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some 
clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if 
it is true) of what womanly mind and virtue are in 
power and office, with respect to man's ; and how 
their relations, rightly accepted, aid, and increase, 
the vigor and honor, and authority of both. 

And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last 
lecture : namely, that the first use of education was to 
enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest 
men on all points of earnest difficulty. That to use 
books rightly, was to go to them for help : to appeal 
to them, when our knowledge and power of thought 
failed ; to be led by them into wider sight, purer con- 
ception than our own, and receive from them the 
united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, 
against our solitary and unstable opinion. 

Let us do this now. Let us see whether the great- 
est, the wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are 
agreed in any wise on this point : let us hear the tes- 
timony they have left respecting what they held to be 
the true dignity of woman, and her mode of help to 
man. 

56. And first let us take Shakespeare. 

Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no 
heroes; — he has only heroines. There is not one 
entirely heroic figure in all his plays, except the slight 
sketch of Henry the Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes 
of the stage ; and the still slighter Valentine in " The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona." In his labored and per- 
fect plays you have no hero. Othello would have 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 105 

been one, if his simplicity had not been so great as 
to leave him the prey of every base practice round him ; 
but he is the only example even approximating to the 
heroic type. Coriolanus — Cssar — Antony, stand 
in flawed strength, and fall by their vanities ; — Ham- 
let is indolent, and drowsily speculative ; Romeo an 
impatient boy ; the Merchant of Venice languidly sub- 
missive to adverse fortune; Kent, in "King Lear," 
is entirely noble at heart, but too rough and unpol- 
ished to be of true use at the critical time, and he 
sinks into the office of a servant only. Orlando, no 
less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, fol- 
lowed, comforted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas 
there is hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in 
it, steadfast in grave hope, and errorless purpose ; 
Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, 
Queen Katherine, Perdita, Sylvia, Viola, Rosalind, 
Helena, and last, and perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, all 
are faultless ; conceived in the highest heroic type of 
humanity. 

57. Then observe secondly. 

The catastrophe of every play is caused always by 
the folly or fault of a man ; the redemption, if there be 
any, is by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and, 
faiUng that, there is none. The catastrophe of King 
Lear is owing to his own want of judgment, his im- 
patient vanity, his misunderstanding of his children ; 
the virtue of his one true daughter would have saved 
him from all the injuries of the others, unless he had 
cast her away from him ; as it is, she all but saves 
him. 

Of Othello I need not trace the tale ; — nor the one 



io6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

weakness of his so mighty love ; nor the inferiority of 
his perceptive intellect to that even of the second 
woman character in the play, the Emilia who dies in 
wild testimony against his error: — "Oh, murderous 
coxcomb ! What should such a fool do with so good 
a wife ? " 

In " Romeo and Juliet," the wise and entirely brave 
stratagem of the wife is brought to ruinous issue by 
the reckless impatience of her husband. In "Win- 
ter's Tale," and in " Cymbeline," the happiness and 
existence of two princely households, lost through 
long years, and imperilled to the death by the folly of 
the husbands, are redeemed at last by the queenly 
patience and wisdom of the wives. In " Measure for 
Measure," the injustice of the judges, and the corrupt 
cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victori- 
ous truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In 
" Coriolanus," the mother's counsel, acted upon in 
time, would have saved her son from all evil ; his 
momentary forgetfulness of it is his ruin ; her prayer at 
last granted, saves him — not, indeed, from death, but 
from the curse of living as the destroyer of his country. 

And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the 
fickleness of a lover who is a mere wicked child? — 
of Helena, against the petulance and insult of a care- 
less youth? — of the patience of Hero, the passion of 
Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of the 
" unlessoned girl," who appears among the helpless- 
ness, the blindness, and the vindictive passions of men, 
as a gentle angel, to save merely by her presence, 
and defeat the worst intensities of crime by her smile? 

58. Observe, further, among all the principal figures 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS, 107 

in Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman 
— Ophelia ; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the 
critical moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature 
be, a guide to him when he needs her most, that all 
the bitter catastrophe follows. Finally, though there 
are three wicked women among the principal figures. 
Lady Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril, they are felt at 
once to be frightful exceptions to the ordinary laws 
of life ; fatal in their influence also in proportion to 
the power for good which they have abandoned. 

Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to 
the position and character of women in human life. 
He represents them as infallibly faithful and wise 
counsellors, — incorruptibly just and pure examples — 
strong always to sanctify even when they cannot save. 

59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of 
the nature of man, — still less in his understanding 
of the causes and courses of fate, — but only as the 
writer who has given us the broadest view of the con- 
ditions- and modes of ordinary thought in modern 
society, I ask you next to receive the witness of 
Walter Scott. 

I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of 
no value : and though the early romantic poetry is 
very beautiful, its testimony is of no weight, other 
than that of a boy's ideal. But his true works, studied 
from Scottish life, bear a true witness, and in the 
whole range of these there are but three men who 
reach the heroic type^ — Dandle Dinmont, Rob Roy, 

1 I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have 
noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great 
characters of men in the Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrow- 
ness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in 



io8 SESAME AND LILIES, 

and Claverhouse : of these, one is a border farmer-, 
another a freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad 
cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in 
their courage and faith, together with a strong, but un- 
cultivated, or mistakenly applied, intellectual power ; 
while his younger men are the gentlemanly playthings 
of fantastic fortune, and only by aid (or accident) of 
that fortune, survive, not vanquish, the trials they 
involuntarily sustain. Of any disciplined, or consist- 
ent character, earnest, in a purpose wisely conceived, 
or dealing with forms of hostile evil, definitely chal- 
lenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no trace in 
his conceptions of men. Whereas in his imaginations 
of women, — in the characters of Ellen Douglas, of 
Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, 
Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, 
Alice Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with endless varieties 
of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power, we find 
in all a quite infallible and inevitable sense of dignity 
and justice ; a fearless, instant, and untiring self- 
sacrifice to even the appearance of duty, much more 
to its real claims ; and, finally, a patient wisdom of 
deeply restrained aiTection, wdiich does infinitely more 
than protect its objects from a momentary error ; it 
gradually forms, animates, and exalts the characters 
of the unw^orthy lovers, until, at the close of the tale, 
we are just able and no more, to take patience in hear- 
ing of their unmerited success. 

Edward Glendenning, and the like ; and I ought to have noticed that 
there are several quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the 
backgrounds ; three — let us accept joyously this courtesy to England 
and her soldiers — are English officers: Colonel Gardiner, Colonel 
Talbot, and Colonel Mannering. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 109 

So that in all cases, with Scott as with Shake- 
speare, it is the woman who watches over, teaches, 
and guides the youth ; it is never, by any chance, 
the youth who watches over or educates his mis- 
tress. 

60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver and 
deeper testimony — that of the great Italians and 
Greeks. You know well the plan of Dante's great 
poem — that it is a love-poem to his dead lady, a song 
of praise for her watch over his soul. Stooping only 
to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from destruc- 
tion — saves him from hell. He is going eternally 
astray in despair ; she comes down from heaven to 
his help, and throughout the ascents of Paradise is 
his teacher, interpreting for him the most difficult 
truths, divine and human : and leading him, with 
rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. 

I do not insist upon Dante's conception ; if I began 
I could not cease : besides, you might think this a 
wild imagination of one poet's heart. So I will 
rather read to you a few verses of the deliberate writ- 
ing of a knight of Pisa to his living lady, wholly char- 
acteristic of the feeling of all the noblest men of the 
thirteenth century, preserved among many other such 
records of knightly honor and love, which Dante 
Rossetti has gathered for us from among the early 
Italian poets. 

For lo ! th}^ law is passed 
That this my love should manifestly be 

To serve and honor thee : 
And so I do ; and my delight is full, 
Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 



no SESAME AND LILIES, 

Without almost, I am all rapturous, 

Since thus my will was set 
To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence : 
Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 

A pain or regret, 
But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense : 
Considering that from thee all virtues spread 

As from a fountain head, — 
That 171 thy gift is wisdojii's best avail, 

And honor without fail ; 
With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 

Lady, since I conceived 
Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, 

My life has been apart 
In shilling brightness and the place of truth; 

Which till that time, good sooth, 
Groped among shadows in a darken'd place. 

Where many hours and days 
It hardly ever had remember'd good. 

But now my servitude 
Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 

A man from a wild beast 
Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived. 

6i. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight 
would have had a lower estimate of women than this 
Christian lover. His own spiritual subjection to 
them was indeed not so absolute ; but as regards 
their own personal character, it was only because 
you could not have followed me so easily, that I did 
not take the Greek women instead of Shakespeare's ; 
and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty 
and faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of 
Andromache ; the divine, yet rejected wisdom of 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. m 

Cassandra ; the playful kindness and simple princess- 
life of happy Nausicaa ; the housewifely calm of that 
of Penelope, with its watch upon the sea ; the ever 
patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety of the sis- 
ter, and daughter, in Antigone ; the bowing down of 
Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent ; and, finally, the 
expectation of the resurrection, made clear to the 
soul of the Greeks in the return from her grave - of 
that Alcestis, who, to save her husband, had passed 
calmly through the bitterness of death. 

62. Now I could multiply witness upon witness of 
this kind upon you if 1 had time. 1 would take 
Chaucer, and show you why he wrote a Legend of 
Good Women; but no Legend of Good Men. I 
would take Spenser, and show you how all his fairy 
knights are sometimes deceived and sometimes van- 
quished ; but the soul of Una is never darkened, and 
the spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I 
could go back into the mythical teaching of the most 
ancient times, and show you how the great people, — 
by one of whose princesses it was appointed that the 
Lawgiver of all the earth should be educated, rather 
than by his own kindred ; — how that great Egyptian 
people, wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit of 
Wisdom the form of a woman ; and into her hand, 
for a symbol, the weaver^s shuttle : and how the 
name and the form of that spirit, adopted, believed, 
and obeyed by the Greeks, became that Athena of 
the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to whose faith you 
owe, down to this date, whatever you hold most pre- 
cious in art, in literature, or in types of national 
virtue. 



112 SESAME AND LILIES. 

63. But I will not wander into this distant and 
mythical element ; I will only ask you to give its le- 
gitimate value to the testimony of these great poets 
and men of the world, — consistent as you see it is 
on this head. I will ask you whether it can be sup- 
posed that these men, in the main work of their lives, 
are amusing themselves with a fictitious and idle 
view of the relations between man and woman ; — 
nay, worse than fictitious or idle ; for a thing may be 
imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible ; but this, 
their ideal of women, is, according to our common 
idea of the marriage relation, wholly undesirable. 
The woman, we say, is not to guide, nor even to 
think, for herself. The man is always to be the 
wiser ; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the superior 
in knowledge and discretion, as in power. 

64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our 
minds on this matter ? Are all these great men mis- 
taken, or are we ? Are Shakespeare and ^schylus, 
Dante and Homer, merely dressing dolls for us ; or, 
worse than dolls, unnatural visions, the realization of 
which, were it possible, would bring anarchy into all 
households and ruin into all affections ? Nay, if you 
could suppose this, take lastly the evidence of facts, 
given by the human heart itself. In all Christian 
ages which have been remarkable for their purity or 
progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedi- 
ent devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say 
obedient — not merely enthusiastic and worshipping 
in imagination, but entirely subject, receiving from 
the beloved woman, however young, not only the 
encouragement, the praise, and the reward of all toil, 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 113 

but, so far as any choice is open, or any question dif- 
ficult of decision, the direction of all toil. That 
chivalry, to the abuse and dishonor of which are 
attributable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust 
in peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic rela- 
tions ; and to the original purity and power of which 
we owe the defence alike of faith, of law, and of love ; 
— that chivalry, I say, in its very first conception of 
honorable life, assumes the subjection of the young 
knight to the command — should it even be the com- 
mand in caprice — of his lady. It assumes this, 
because its masters knew that the first and necessary 
impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is 
this of blind service to its lady : that where that true 
faith and captivity are not, all wayward and wicked 
passion must be ; and that in this rapturous obedi- 
ence to the single love of his youth, is the sanctifica- 
tion of all man's strength, and the continuance of all 
his purposes. And this, not because such obedience 
would be safe, or honorable, were it ever rendered to 
the unworthy ; but because it ought to be impossible 
for every noble youth — it is impossible for every one 
rightly trained — to love any one whose gentle coun- 
sel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful command he 
can hesitate to obey. 

65. I do not insist by any further argument on 
this, for I think it should commend itself at once to 
your knowledge of what has been and to your feeling 
of what should be. You cannot think that the buck- 
ling on of the knight's armor by his lady's hand was a 
mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is the type of 
an eternal truth — that the souFs armor is never well 



114 SESAME AND LILIES. 

set to the heart unless a woman's hand has braced 
it ; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the 
honor of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely 
lines — I would they were learned by all youthful 
ladies of England : — 

'' Ah wasteful woman ! she who may 
On her sweet self set her own price, 
Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
How given for nought her priceless gift, 
How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, 
Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
Had made brutes men, and men divine ! " 1 

66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations 
of lovers I believe you will accept. But what we too 
often doubt is the fitness of the continuance of such 
a relation throughout the whole of human life. We 
think it right in the lover and mistress, not in the 
husband and wife. That is to say, we think that a 
reverent and tender duty is due to one whose affec- 
tion we will doubt, and whose character we as yet do 
but partially and distantly discern ; and that this 
reverence and duty are to be withdrawn when the 
affection has become wholly and limitlessly our own, 
and the character has been so sifted and tried that we 
fear not to intrust it with the happiness of our lives. 
Do you not see how ignoble this is, as well as how 
unreasonable ? Do you not feel that marriage — when 
it is marriage at all — is only the seal which marks 
the vowed transition of temporary into untiring ser- 
vice, and of fitful into eternal love ? 

1 Coventry Patmore. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 115 

67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this 
guiding function of the woman reconcilable with a 
true wifely subjection? Simple in that it is 2. guiding, 
not a determining, function. Let me try to show you 
briefly how these powers seem to be rightly dis- 
tinguishable. 

We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in 
speaking of the "superiority" of one sex to the 
other, as if they could be compared in similar things. 
Each has what the other has not : each completes 
the other, and is completed by the other : they are 
in nothing alike, and the happiness and perfection of 
both depend on each asking and receiving from the 
other what the other only can give. 

68. Now their separate characters are briefly 
these. The man's power is active, progressive, de- 
fensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the 
discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for specula- 
tion and invention ; his energy for adventure, for war, 
and for conquest, wherever war is just, wherever 
conquest necessary. But the woman's power is for 
rule, not for battle, — and her intellect is not for 
invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, ar- 
rangement, and decision. She sees the qualities of 
things, their claims and their places. Her great 
function is Praise : she enters into no contest, but 
infallibly judges the crown of contest. By her office, 
and place, she is protected from all danger and 
temptation. The man, in his rough work in open 
world, must encounter all peril and trial : — to him, 
therefore, the failure, the offence, the inevitable 
error : often he must be wounded, or subdued, often 



Ii6 SESAME AND LILIES, 

misled, and always hardened. But he guards the 
woman from all this ; within his house, as ruled by 
her, unless she herself has sought it, need enter no 
danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. 
This is the true nature of home — it is the place of 
Peace ; the shelter, not only from all injury, but from 
all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is not 
this, it is not home ; so far as the anxieties of the 
outer life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently- 
minded, unknown, unloved, or hostile society of the 
outer world is allowed by either husband or wife to 
cross the threshold, it ceases to be home ; it is then 
only a part of that outer world which you have roofed 
over, and lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred 
place, a vestal temple, a temple of the hearth watched 
over by Household Gods, before whose faces none 
may come but those whom they can receive with 
love, — so far as it is this, and roof and fire are 
types only of a nobler shade and light, — shade as 
of the rock in a weary land, and light as of the 
Pharos in the stormy sea ; — so far it vindicates the 
name, and fulfils the praise, of home. 

And wherever a true wife comes, this home is 
always round her. The stars only may be over her 
head ; the glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be 
the only fire at her foot : but home is yet wherever she 
is ; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, 
better then ceiled with cedar, or painted with ver- 
milion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who 
else were homeless. 

69. This, then, I believe to be, — will you not 
admit it to be, — the woman's true place and power? 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 1 1? 

But do not you see that to fulfil this, she must — as 
far as one can use such terms of a human creature — 
be incapable of error? So far as she rules, all must 
be right, or nothing is. She must be enduringly, 
incorruptibly good ; instinctively, infallibly wise — 
wise,, not for self-development, but for self-renuncia- 
tion : wise, not that she may set herself above her 
husband, but that she may never fail from his side : 
wise, not with the narrowness of insolent and love- 
less pride, but with the passionate gentleness of 
an infinitely variable, because infinitely applicable, 
modesty of service — the true changefulness of woman. 
In that great sense — " La donna h mobile," not *' Qual 
pium^ al vento ; " no, nor yet " Variable as the shade, 
by the light quivering aspen made ; " but variable as 
the lights manifold in fair and serene division, that it 
may take the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 

70. IL I have been trying, thus far, to show you 
what should be the place, and what the power, of 
woman. Now, secondly, we ask. What kind of edu- 
cation is to fit her for these ? 

And if you indeed think this a true conception of 
her office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace 
the course of education which would fit her for the 
one, and raise her to the other. 

The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful per- 
sons now doubt this, — is to secure for her such physi- 
cal training and exercise as may confirm her health, 
and perfect her beauty, the highest refinement of that 
beauty being unattainable without splendor of ac- 
tivity and of delicate strength. To perfect her beauty, 
I say, and increase its power ; it cannot be too power- 



Ii8 SESAME AND LILIES, 

ful, nor shed its sacred light too far : only remember 
that all physical freedom is vain to produce beauty 
without a corresponding freedom of heart. There 
are two passages of that poet who is distinguished, 
it seems to me, from all others — not by power, but 
by exquisite rightntss — which point you to the source, 
and describe to you, in a few syllables, the completion 
of womanly beauty. I will read the introductory 
stanzas, but the last is the one I wish you specially to 

not'\e : 

" Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
Then Nature said, ' A loveher flower 

On earth was never sown. 
This child I to myself will take ; 
She shall be mine, and I will make 

A lady of my own. 

* Myself will to my darling be 

Both law and impulse ; and with me 

The girl, in rock and plain, 
In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
Shall feel an overseeing power 

To kindle, or restrain. 

* The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her, for her the willow bend ; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm, 
Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 

By silent sympathy. 

* And vital feelings of delight 

Shall rear her form to stately height, — 

Her virgin bosom swell. 
Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 
While she and T together live, 

Here in this happy dell.' " 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 119 

** Vital feelings of delight, " observe. There are 
deadly feelings of delight ; but the natural ones are 
vital, necessary to very life. 

And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to 
be vital. Do not think you can make a girl lovely, 
if you do not make her happy. There is not one 
restraint you put on a good girPs nature — there is 
not one check you give to her instincts of affection or 
effort — which will not be indelibly written on her 
features, with a hardness which is all the more pain- 
ful because it takes away the brightness from the eyes 
of innocence, and the charm from the brow of virtue. 

71. This for the means : now note the end. Take 
from the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description 
of womanly beauty — 

" A countenance in which did meet 
Sweet records, promises as sweet." 

The perfect loveliness of a woman^s countenance 
can only consist in that majestic peace, which is 
founded in the memory of happy and useful years, — 
full of sweet records ; and from the joining of this 
with that yet more majestic childishness, which is 
still full of change and promise ; — opening always — 
modest at once, and bright, with hope of better 
things to be won, and to be bestowed. There is no 
old age where there is still that promise — it is 
eternal youth. 

72. Thus, then, you have first to mould her phys- 
ical frame, and then, as the strength she gains will 
permit you, to fill and temper her mind with all 



I20 SESAME AND LILIES. 

knowledge and thoughts which tend to confirm its 
natural instincts of justice, and refine its natural 
tact of love. 

All such knowledge should be given her as may 
enable her to understand, and even to aid, the work 
of men : and yet it should be given, not as knowl- 
edge, — not as if it were, or could be, for her an 
object to know ; but only to feel, and to judge. It is 
of no moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness 
in herself, whether she knows many languages or 
one ; but it is of the utmost, that she should be able 
to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand 
the sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no 
moment to her own worth or dignity that she should 
be acquainted with this science or that ; but it is 
of the highest that she should be trained in habits 
of accurate thought ; that she should understand the 
meaning, the inevitableness, and the loveliness of 
natural laws, and follow at least some one path of 
scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold of that 
bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the 
wisest and bravest of men can descend, owning 
themselves for ever children, gathering pebbles on a 
boundless shore. It is of little consequence how 
many positions of cities she knows, or how many 
dates of events, or how many names of celebrated 
persons — it is not the object of education to turn a 
woman into a dictionary ; but it is deeply necessary 
that she should be taught to enter with her whole 
personality into the history she reads ; to picture the 
passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination ; 
to apprehend, with her fine instincts, the pathetic 



OR QUEENS' GARDENS, 121 

circumstances and dramatic relations, which the his- 
torian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, and 
disconnects by his arrangement : it is for her to trace 
the hidden equities of divine reward, and catch sight, 
through the darkness, of the fateful threads of woven 
fire that connect error with its retribution. But, 
chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend the limits 
of her sympathy with respect to that history which 
is being forever determined, as the moments pass in 
which she draws her peaceful breath ; and to the 
contemporary calamity which, were it but rightly 
mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. 
She is to exercise herself in imagining what would be 
the effects upon her mind and conduct, if she were 
daily brought into the presence of the suffering which 
is not the less real because shut from her sight. She 
is to be taught somewhat to understand the nothing- 
ness of the proportion with which that little world 
in which she lives and loves, bears to the world in 
which God lives and loves ; — and solemnly she is 
to be taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may 
not be feeble in proportion to the number they em- 
brace, nor her prayer more languid than it is for the 
momentary relief from pain of her husband or her 
child, when it is uttered for the multitudes of those 
who have none to love them, — and is "for all who 
are desolate and oppressed." 

73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concur- 
rence ; perhaps you will not be with me in what I 
believe is most needful for me to say. There is one 
dangerous science for women — one which let them 
indeed beware how they profanely touch — that of 



122 SESAME AND LILIES. 

theology. Strange, and miserably strange, that while 
they are modest enough to doubt their powers, and 
pause at the threshold of sciences where every step is 
demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, 
and without one thought of incompetency, into that 
science in which the greatest men have trembled, 
and the wisest erred. Strange, that they will com- 
placently and pridefully bind up whatever vice or 
folly there is in them, whatever arrogance, petulance, 
or blind incomprehensiveness, into one bitter bundle 
of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in creatures born 
to be Love visible, that where they can know least, 
they will condemn first, and think to recommend 
themselves to their Master by scrambling up the 
steps of His judgment-throne, to divide it with Him. 
Most strange, that they should think they were led 
by the Spirit of the Comforter into habits of mind 
which have become in them the unmixed elements of 
home discomfort ; and that they dare to turn the 
Household Gods of Christianity into ugly idols of 
their own — spiritual dolls, for them to dress accord- 
ing to their caprice ; and from which their husbands 
must turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should 
be shrieked at for breaking them. 

74. I believe, then, with this exception, that a 
girl's education should be nearly, in its course and 
material of study, the same as a boy's ; but quite 
differently directed. A woman in any rank of life, 
ought to know whatever her husband is likely to 
know, but to know it in a different way. His com- 
mand of it should be foundational and progressive, 
hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS, 123 

use. Not but that it would often be wiser in men to 
learn things in a womanly sort of way, for present 
use, and to seek for the discipline ^and training of 
their mental powers in such branches of study as will 
be afterwards fittest for social service ; but, speaking 
broadly, a man ought to know any language or 
science he learns, thoroughly, while a woman ought 
to know the same language, or science, only so far 
as may enable her to sympathize in her husband's 
pleasures, and in those of his best friends. 

75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as 
she reaches. There is a wide difference between 
elementary knowledge and superficial knowledge — 
between a firm beginning, and a feeble smattering. 
A woman may always help her husband by what she 
knows, however little ; by what she half-knows, or 
mis-knows, she will only tease him. 

And, indeed, if there were to be any difference 
between a girPs education and a boy's, I should say 
that of the two the girl should be earlier led, as her 
intellect ripens faster, into deep and serious subjects ; 
and that her range of literature should be, not more, 
but less frivolous, calculated to add the qualities of 
patience and seriousness to her natural poignancy of 
thought and quickness of wit ; and also to keep her 
in a lofty and pure element of thought. I enter not 
now into any question of choice of books ; only be 
sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap as 
they fall out of the package of the circulating library, 
wet with the last and lightest spray of the fountain 
of folly. 

76. Or even qf the fountain of wit ; for with respect 



124 SESAME AND LILIES. 

to that sore temptation of novel-reading, it is not the 
badness of a novel that we should dread, but its 
over- wrought interest. The weakest romance is not 
so stupefying as the lower forms of religious exciting 
literature, and the worst romance is not so corrupting 
as false history, false philosophy, or false political 
essays. But the best romance becomes dangerous, 
if, by its excitement, it renders the ordinary course 
of life uninteresting, and increases the morbid thirst 
for useless acquaintance with scenes in which we 
shall never be called upon to act. 

"j^ . I speak therefore of good novels only; and 
our modern literature is particularly rich in types of 
such. Well read, indeed, these books have serious 
use, being nothing less than treatises on moral anat- 
omy and chemistry ; studies of human nature in the 
elements of it. But I attach little weight to this func- 
tion ; they are hardly ever read with earnestness 
enough to permit them to fulfil it. The utmost they 
usually do is to enlarge somewhat the charity of a 
kind reader, or the bitterness of a malicious one ; for 
each will gather, from the novel, food for her own 
disposition. Those who are naturally proud and 
envious will learn from Thackeray to despise human- 
ity ; those who are naturally gentle, to pity it; those 
who are naturally shallow, to laugh at it. So, also, 
there might be a serviceable power in novels to bring 
before us, in vividness, a human truth which we had 
before dimly conceived ; but the temptation to pic- 
turesqueness of statement is so great, that often the 
best writers of fiction cannot resist it ; and our views 
are rendered so violent and one-sided, that their 
vitality is rather a harm than good. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS, 125 

78. Without, however, venturing here on any at- 
tempt at decision how much novel-reading should be 
allowed, let me at least clearty assert this, that 
whether novels, or poetry, or history be read, they 
should be chosen, not for what is out of them, but 
for what is in them. The chance and scattered evil 
that may here and there haunt, or hide itself in, a 
powerful book, never does any harm to a noble girl ; 
but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, and 
his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have 
access to a good library of old and classical books, 
there need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern 
magazine and novel out of your girPs way : turn her 
loose into the old library every wet day, and let her 
alone. She will find what is good for her; you can- 
not : for there is just this difference between the 
making of a girPs character and a boy's — you may 
chisel a boy into shape, as you would a rock, or 
hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you 
would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer 
a girl into anything. She grows as a flower does, — 
she will wither without sun ; she will decay in her 
sheath, as the narcissus does, if you do not give her 
air enough ; she may fall, and defile her head in dust, 
if you leave her without help at some moments of her 
life ; but you cannot fetter her ; she must take her 
own fair form and way, if she take any, and in mind 
as in body, must have always 

" Her household motions light and free 
And steps of virgin liberty." 

Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn 



126 SESAME AND LILIES. 

in a field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times 
better than you ; and the good ones too, and will eat 
some bitter and prickly ones, good for it, which you 
had not the slightest thought were good. 

79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before 
her, and let her practice in all accomplishments be 
accurate and thorough, so as to enable her to under- 
stand more than she accomplishes. I say the finest 
models — that is to say, the truest, simplest, useful- 
est. Note those epithets ; they will range through 
all the arts. Try them in music, where you might 
think them the least applicable. I say the truest, 
that in which the notes most closely and faithfully 
express the meaning of the words, or the character of 
intended emotion ; again, the simplest, that in which 
the meaning and melody are attained with the fewest 
and most significant notes possible ; and, finally, the 
usefulest, that music which makes the best words 
most beautiful, which enchants them in our memories 
each with its own glory of sound, and which applies 
them closest to the heart at the moment we need 
them. 

80. And not only in the material and in the 
course, but yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a 
girPs education be as serious as a boy's. You bring 
up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard 
ornaments, and then complain of their frivolity. 
Give them the same advantages that you give their 
brothers — appeal to the same grand instincts of vir- 
tue in them ; teach thein also that courage and truth 
are the pillars of their being : do you think that they 
would not answer that appeal, brave and true as they 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 127 

are even now, when you know that there is hardly a 
girPs school in this Christian kingdom where the 
children's courage or sincerity would be thought of 
half so much importance as their way of coming in 
at a door ; and when the whole system of society, as 
respects the mode of establishing them in life, is one 
rotten plague of cowardice and imposture — coward- 
ice, in not daring to let them live, or love, except as 
their neighbors choose ; and imposture, in bringing, 
for the purpose of our own pride, the full glow of the 
world's worst vanity upon a girFs eyes, at the very 
period when the w^hole happiness of her future exist- 
ence depends upon her remaining undazzled ? 

81. And give them, lastly, not only noble teach- 
ings, but noble teachers. You consider somewhat, 
before you send your boy to school, what kind of a 
man the master is ; — whatsoever kind of man he is, 
you at least give him full authority over your son, 
and show some respect to him yourself; if he comes 
to dine with you, you do not put him at a side table ; 
you know also that, at his college, your child's imme- 
diate tutor will be under the direction of somie still 
higher tutor, for whom you have absolute reverence. 
You do not treat the Dean of Christ Church or the 
Master of Trinity as your inferiors. 

But what teachers do you give your girls, and 
what reverence do you show to the teachers you have 
chosen? Is a girl likely to think her own conduct, 
or her own intellect, of much importance, when you 
trust the entire formation of her character, moral and 
intellectual, to a person whom you let your servants 
treat with less respect than they do your housekeeper 



128 SESAME AND LI LIES, 

(as if the soul of your child were a less charge than 
jams and groceries), and whom you yourself think 
you confer an honor upon by letting her sometimes 
sit in the drawing-room in the evening ? 

82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus 
of art. There is one more help which she cannot do 
without — one which, alone, has sometimes done 
more than all other influences besides, — the help of 
wild and fair natures. Hear this of the education 
of Joan of Arc : 

" The education of this poor girl was mean accord- 
ing to the present standard ; was ineffably grand, 
according to a purer philosophic standard ; and 
only not good for our age, because for us it would be 
unattainable. . . . 

"Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed 
most to the advantages of her situation. The foun-- 
tain of Domremy was on the brink of a boundless 
forest ; and it was haunted to that degree by fairies, 
that the parish priest {cure) was obliged to read 
mass there once a year, in order to keep them in any 
decent bounds. . . . 

"But the forests of Domremy — those were the 
glories of the land, for in them abode mysterious 
powers and ancient secrets that towered into tragic 
strength. ' Abbeys there were, and abbey windows,' 
— ' like Moorish temples of the Hindoos,' that exer- 
cised even princely power both in Touraine and in 
the German Diets. These had their sweet bells that 
pierced the forests for many a league at matins or 
vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few 
enough, and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS, 129 

as in no degree to disturb the deep solitude of the 
region ; yet many enough to spread a network or 
awning of Christian sanctity over what else might 
have seemed a heathen wilderness." ^ 

Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, 
woods eighteen miles deep to the centre ; but you 
can, perhaps, keep a fairy or tw^o for your children 
yet, if you wish to keep them. But do you wish it? 
Suppose you had each, at the back of your houses, a 
garden large enough for your children to play in, 
with just as much lawn as would give them room to 
run, — no more — and that you could not change 
your abode ; but that, if you chose, you could double 
your income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal shaft 
in the middle of the lawn, and turning the flower- 
beds into heaps of coke. Would you do it? I think 
not. I can tell you, you would be wrong if you did, 
though it gave you income sixty-fold instead of four- 
fold. 

83. Yet this is what you are doing with all Eng- 
land. The whole country is but a little garden, not 
more than enough for your children to run on the 
lawns of, if you would let them all run there. And 
this little garden you will turn into furnace-ground, 
and fill with heaps of cinders, if you can ; and those 
children of yours, not you, will suffer for it. For the 
fairies will not be all banished ; there are fairies of 
the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts seem 
to be "sharp arrows of the mighty;" but their last 
gifts are " coals of juniper." 

1 " Joan of Arc : in reference to M. Michelet's History of France." 
De Quincey's Works. Vol. iii. p. 217. 



130 SESAME AND LILIES. 

84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part of 
my subject that 1 feel more — press this upon you ; 
for we made so little use of the power of nature while 
we had it that we shall hardly feel what we have lost. 
Just on the other side of the Mersey you have your 
Snowdon and your Menai Straits, and that mighty 
granite rock beyond the moors of Anglesea, splendid 
in its heathery crest, and foot planted in the deep 
sea, once thought of as sacred — a divine promontory, 
looking westward ; the Holy Head or Headland, still 
not without awe when its red light glares first 
through storm. These are the hills, and these the 
bays and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, 
would have been always loved, always fateful in 
influence on the national mind. That Snowdon is 
your Parnassus ; but where are its Muses ? That 
Holyhead mountain is your Island of ^gina, but 
where is its Temple to Minerva? 

85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva 
had achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus, up 
to the year 1848 ? — Here is a little account of a 
Welsh school, from page 261 of the Report on Wales, 
published by the Committee of Council on Educa- 
tion. This is a school close to a town containing 
5,000 persons : — 

'* 1 then called up a larger class, most of whom had 
recently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly 
declared they had never heard of Christ, and two that 
they had never heard of God. Two out of six 
thought Christ was on earth now (' they might 
have had a worse thought, perhaps'), three knew 
nothing about the crucifixion. Four out of seven did 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 131 

not know the names of the months, nor the number 
of days in a year. They had no notion of addition 
beyond two and two, or three and three ; their minds 
were perfect blanks/' 

Oh ye women of England ! from the Princess of 
that Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your 
own children can be brought into their true fold of 
rest while these are scattered on the hills, as sheep 
having no shepherd. And do not think your daughters 
can be trained to the truth of their own human 
beauty, while the pleasant places, which God made 
at once for their school-room and their play-ground, 
lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize them 
rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless 
you baptize them also in the sweet waters which the 
great Lawgiver strikes forth forever from the rocks of 
your native land — waters which a Pagan would have 
worshipped in their purity, and you only worship 
with pollution. You cannot lead your children faith- 
fully to those narrow axe-hewn church altars of yours, 
while the dark azure altars in heaven — the mountains 
that sustain your island throne, — mountains on which 
a Pagan would have seen the powers of heaven rest 
in every wreathed cloud — remain for you without 
inscription ; altars built, not to, but by, an Unknown 
God. 

86. III. Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of 
the teaching, of woman, and thus of her household 
office, and queenhness. We come now to our last, 
our widest question, — What is her queenly office 
with respect to the state ? 

Generally, we are under an impression that a man's 



132 SESAME AND LILIES, 

duties are public, and a woman^s private. But this 
is not altogether so. A man has a personal work or 
duty, relating to his own home, and a public work or 
duty, which is the expansion of the other, relating to 
the state. So a woman has a personal work or duty, 
relating to her own home, and a public work and 
duty, which is also the expansion of that. 

Now the man's work for his own home is, as has 
been said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and 
defence ; the woman's to secure its order, comfort, 
and loveliness. 

Expand both these functions. The man's duty 
as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in 
the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of the 
state. The woman's duty, as a member of the 
commonwealth, is to assist in the ordering, in the 
comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the state. 

What the man is at his own gate, defending it, if 
need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a 
less, but in a more devoted measure, he is to be at 
the gate of his country, leaving his home, if need be, 
even to the spoiler, to do his more incumbent work 
there. 

And, in like manner, what the woman is to be 
wdthin her gates, as the centre of order, the balm of 
distress, and the mirror of beauty ; that she is also 
to be without her gates, where order is more difficult, 
distress more imminent, loveliness more rare. 

And as within the human heart there is always set 
an instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which 
you cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you 
withdraw it from its true purpose ; — as there is the 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 133 

intense instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, 
maintains all the sanctities of life and, misdirected, 
undermines them ; and mitst do either the one or the 
other ; so there is in the human heart an inextinguish- 
able instinct, the love of power, which, rightly 
directed, maintains all the majesty of law and life, 
and misdirected, wrecks them. 

87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart 
of man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, 
and God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you 
blame or rebuke the desire of power! — for Heaven's 
sake, and for Man's sake, desire it all you can. But 
what power? That is all the question. Power to 
destroy? the lion's limb, and the dragon's breath? 
Not so. Power to heal, to redeem, to guide, and to 
guard. Power of the sceptre and shield; the power 
of the royal hand that heals in touching, — that binds 
the fiend and looses the captive ; the throne that is 
founded on the rock of Justice, and descended from 
only by steps of mercy. Will you not covet such 
power as this, and seek such throne as this, and be no 
more housewives, but queens? 

88. It is now long since the women of England 
arrogated universally a title which once belonged to 
nobility only, and, having once been in the habit of 
accepting the simple title of gentlewoman, as corre- 
spondent to that of gentleman, insisted on the privi- 
lege of assuming the title of ** Lady," ^ which properly 
corresponds only to the title of " Lord." 

1 I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English 
youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a 
given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title ; attainable only 



134 SESAME AND LILIES. 

I do not blame them for this ; but only for their 
narrow motive in this. I would have them desire 
and claim the title of Lady, provided they claim, 
not merely the title, but the office and duty signified 
by it. Lady means '' bread-giver " or "loaf-giver," 
and Lord means *'maintainer of laws," and both 
titles have reference, not to the law which is main- 
tained in the house, nor to the bread which is given 
to the household ; but to law maintained for the 
multitude, and to bread broken among the multitude. 
So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title- in so 
far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord 
of lords ; and a Lady has legal claim to her title, 
only so far as she communicates that help to the poor 
representatives of her Master, which women once, 
ministering to Him of their substance, were per- 
mitted to extend to that Master himself; and when 
she is known, as He Himself once was, in breaking 
of bread. 

89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this 
power of the Dominus, or House-Lord, and of the 
Domina, or House-Lady, is great and venerable, not 
in the number of those through whom it has lineally 
descended, but in the number of those whom it grasps 
within its sway ; it is always regarded with reverent 
worship wherever its dynasty is founded on its duty, 
and its ambition co-relative with its beneficence. 



by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment ; 
and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonorable 
act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, 
possible, in a nation which loved honor. That it would not be possible 
among us is not to the discredit of the scheme. 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 135 

Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being 
noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so ; you 
cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too 
great ; but see to it that your train is of vassals whom 
you serve and feed, not merely of slaves who serve 
and feed you ; and that the multitude which obeys 
you is of those whom you have comforted, not op- 
pressed, — whom you have redeemed, not led into 
captivity. 

90. And this, which is true of the lower or house- 
hold dominion, is equally true of the queenly domin- 
ion ; — that highest dignity is open to you, if you will 
also accept that highest duty. Rex et Regina — Roi 
et Reine — *' Rzght-dotYS ; " they differ but from the 
Lady and Lord, in that their power is supreme over 
the mind as over the person — that they not only 
feed and clothe, but direct and teach. And whether 
consciously or not, you must be, in many a heart, 
enthroned : there is no putting by that crown ; 
queens you must always be ; queens to your lovers ; 
queens to your husbands and your sons ; queens of 
higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows 
itself, and will forever bow, before the myrtle crown, 
and the stainless sceptre, of womanhood. But, alas! 
you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping 
at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it 
in the greatest ; and leaving misrule and violence to 
work their will among men, in defiance of the power, 
which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of all 
Peace, the wicked among you betray, and the good 
forget. 

91. "Prince of Peace." Note that name. When 



136 SESAME AND LILIES. 

kings rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges 
of the earth, they also, in their narrow place, and 
mortal measure, receive the power of it. There are 
no other rulers than they : other rule than theirs is 
but ?///j"rule ; they who govern verily ** Dei gratia " 
are all princes, yes, or princesses, of peace. There 
is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but 
you women are answerable for it ; not in that you 
have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. 
Men, by their nature, are prone to fight ; they will 
fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to 
choose their cause for them, and to forbid them when 
there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injus- 
tice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it lies 
lastly with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but 
you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it 
down without sympathy in their own struggle ; but 
men are feeble in sympathy, and contracted in hope ; 
it is you only who can feel the depths of pain ; and 
conceive the way of its healing. Instead of trying 
to do this, you turn away from it ; you shut your- 
selves within your park walls and garden gates ; and 
you are content to know that there is beyond them a 
whole world in wilderness — a world of secrets which 
you dare not penetrate ; and of suffering which you 
dare not conceive. 

92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most 
amazing among the phenomena of humanity. I am 
surprised at no depths to which, when once warped 
from its honor, that humanity can be degraded. 1 
do not wonder at the miser^s death, with his hands, 
as they relax, dropping gold. I do not wonder at 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS, 137 

the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped about 
his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed 
murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in 
the darkness of the railway, or reed-shadow of the 
marsh. I do not even wonder at the myriad-handed 
murder of multitudes, done boastfully in the daylight 
by the frenzy of nations, and the immeasurable, 
unimaginable guilt, heaped up from hell to heaven, 
of their priests, and kings. But this is wonderful to 
me — oh, how wonderful! — to see the tender and 
delicate woman among you, with her child at her 
breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it, 
and over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and 
stronger than the seas of earth — nay, a magnitude 
of blessing which her husband would not part with 
for all that earth itself, though it were made of one 
entire and perfect chrysolite : — to see her abdicate 
this majesty to play at precedence with her next- 
door neighbor! This is wonderful — oh, wonderful! 
— to see her, with every innocent feeling fresh within 
her, go out in the morning into her garden to play 
with the fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift their 
heads when they are drooping, with her happy smile 
upon her face, and no cloud upon her brow, because 
there is a little wall around her place of peace : and 
yet she knows, in her heart, if she would only look 
for its knowledge, that, outside of that little rose- 
covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn 
up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift 
of their life-blood. 

93. Have you ever considered what a deep under 
meaning there lies, or at least, may be read, if we 



138 SESAME AIVD LILIES, 

choose, in our custom of strewing flowers before 
those whom we think most happy? Do you suppose 
it is merely to deceive them into the hope that happi- 
ness is always to fall thus in showers at their feet? — 
that wherever they pass they will tread on herbs of 
sweet scent, and that the rough ground will be made 
smooth for them by depth of roses? So surely as 
they believe that, they will have, instead, to walk on 
bitter herbs and thorns ; and the only softness to 
their feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended 
they should believe ; there is a better meaning in 
that old custom. The path of a good w^oman is 
indeed strewn with flowers ; but they rise behind her 
steps, not before them. " Her feet have touched the 
meadows, and left the daisies rosy." 

94. You think that only a lover's fancy; — false 
and vain ! How if it could be true? You think this 
also, perhaps, only a poet's fancy — 

*^Even the light harebell raised its head 
Elastic from her airy tread." 

But it is little to say of a woman, that she only 
does not destroy where she passes. She should 
revive ; the harebells should bloom, not stoop, as she 
passes. You think I am going into wild hyperbole? 
Pardon me, not a whit — I mean what I say in calm 
English, spoken in resolute truth. You have heard 
it said — (and I believe there is more than fancy even 
in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) — 
that flowers only flourish rightly in the garden of 
some one who loves them. I know you would like 
that to be true ; you would think it a pleasant magic 
if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 139 

by a kind look upon them : nay, more, if your look 
had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard them 

— if you could bid the black blight turn away, and 
the knotted caterpillar spare — if you could bid the 
dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to the 
south wind, in frost — '* Come, thou south, and 
breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may 
flow out." This you would think a great thing? And 
do you think it not a greater thing, that all this, 
(and how much more than this !) you can do, for 
fairer flowers than these — ^flowers that could bless 
you for having blessed them, and will love your for 
having loved them ; — flowers that have eyes like 
yours, and thoughts like yours, and lives like yours ; 
which, once saved, you save forever? Is this only a 
little power? Far among the moorlands and the 
rocks, — far in the darkness of the terrible streets, 

— these feeble florets are lying, with all their fresh 
leaves torn, and their stems broken — will you never 
go down to them, nor set them in order in their little 
fragrant beds, nor fence them in their shuddering 
from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow morn- 
ing for you, but not for them ; and the dawn rise to 
watch, far away, those frantic Dances of Death ; ^ 
but no dawn rise to breathe upon these living banks 
of wild violet, and woodbine, and rose ; nor call to 
you, through your casement, — call, (not giving you 
the name of the English poet's lady, but the name of 
Dante's great Matilda, who, on the edge of happy 
Lethe, stood, wreathing flowers with flowers,) say- 
ing:— 

1 See note, p. 83. 



I40 SESAME AND LILIES, 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown, 
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 
And the musk of the roses blown ? " 

Will you not go down among them ? — among those 
sweet living things, whose new courage sprung from 
the earth with the deep color of heaven upon it, is 
starting up in strength of goodly spire ; and whose 
purity, washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, 
into the flower of promise — and still they turn to 
you, and for you, " The Larkspur listens — I hear, I 
hear ! And the Lily whispers — I wait." 

95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I 
read you that first stanza ; and think that I had forgot- 
ten them? Hear them now : — 

" Come into the garden, Maud, 
For the black bat, night, has flown; 
Come into the garden, Maud, 
I am here at the gate, alone." 

Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this 
sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you? Did you ever 
hear, not of a Maud, but a Madeline, who w^entdown 
to her garden in the dawn, and found One waiting at 
the gate, whom she supposed to be the gardener? 
Have you not sought Him often; — sought Him in 
vain, all through the night ; — sought Him in vain at 
the gate of that old garden where the fiery sword is 
set ? He is never there ; but at the gate of this garden 
He is waiting always — waiting to take your hand — 
ready to go down to see the fruits of the valley, to see 
whether the vine has flourished, and the pomegranate 



OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 141 

budded. There you shall see with Him the little ten- 
drils of the vines that His hand is guiding — there 
you shall see the pomegranate springing where His 
hand cast the sanguine seed ; — more : you shall see 
the troops of the angel keepers that, with their wings, 
wave aw^ay the hungry birds from the pathsides where 
He has sown, and call to each other between the vine- 
yard rows, *' Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that 
spoil the vines, for our vines have tender grapes." 
Oh — you queens — you queens ! among the hills and 
happy greenw^ood of this land of yours, shall the foxes 
have holes, and the birds of the air have nests ; and, 
in your cities, shall the stones cry out against you, 
that they are the only pillows where the Son of Man 
can lay His head? 



LECTURE III 

THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 

Lecture delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Science, 
Dubhn, 1868. 

96. When I accepted the privilege of addressing 
you to-day, I was not aware of a restriction with 
respect to the topics of discussion which may be 
brought before this society^ — a restriction which, 
though entirely wise and right under the circumstances 
contemplated in its introduction, would necessarily 
have disabled me, thinking as I think, from preparing 
any lecture for you on the subject of art in a form 
which might be permanently useful. Pardon me, 
therefore, in so far as I must trangress such limitation ; 
for indeed my infringement will be of the letter — 
not of the spirit — of your commands. In whatever 
I may say touching the religion which has been the 
foundation of art, or the policy which has contributed 
to its power, if I offend one, I shall offend all; for I 
shall take no note of any separations in creeds, or 
antagonisms in parties : neither do I fear that ulti- 
mately I shall offend any, by proving — or at lea3t 
stating as capable of positive proof — the connection 
of all that is best in the crafts and arts of man, with 
the simplicity of his faith, and the sincerity of his 
patriotism. 

1 That no reference should be made to religious questions. 
142 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 143 

97. But I speak to you under another disadvantage, 
by which I am checked in frankness of utterance, not 
here only, but everywhere ; namely, that I am never 
fully aware how far my audiences are disposed to give 
me credit for real knowledge of my subject, or how 
far they grant me attention only because 1 have been 
sometimes thought an ingenious or pleasant essayist 
upon it. For I have had what, in many respects, I 
boldly called the misfortune, to set my words some- 
times prettily together ; not without a foolish vanity 
in the poor knack that I had of doing so ; until I was 
heavily punished for this pride, by finding that many 
people thought of the words only, and cared nothing 
for their meaning. Happily, therefore, the power of 
using such pleasant language — if indeed it ever were 
mine — is passing away from me ; and whatever I am 
now able to say at all, I -find myself forced to say with 
great plainness. For my thoughts have changed also, 
as my words have ; and whereas in earlier life, what 
little influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly to 
the enthusiasm with which I w-as able to dwell on the 
beauty of the physical clouds, and of their colors in 
the sky ; so all the influence I now desire to retain 
must be due to the earnestness with which I am en- 
deavoring to trace the form and beauty of another 
kind of clouds than those ; the bright cloud, of which 
it is written — 

" What is your life? It is even as a vapor that ap- 
peareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away." 

98. I suppose few people reach the middle or latter 
period of their age, without having, at some moment 
of change or disappointment,' felt the truth of those 



144 SESAME AND LILIES, 

bitter words ; and been startled by the fading of the 
sunshine from the cloud of their life, into the sudden 
agony of the knowledge that the fabric of it was as 
fragile as a dream, and the endurance of it as tran- 
sient as the dew. But it is not always that, even at 
such times of melancholy surprise, we can enter into 
any true perception that this human life shares, in 
the nature of it, not only the evanescence, but the 
mystery of the cloud ; that its avenues are wreathed 
in darkness, and its forms and courses no less fantas- 
tic, than spectral and obscure ; so that not only in 
the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in the shadow 
which we cannot pierce, it is true of this cloudy hfe 
of ours, that "man walketh in a vain shadow, and 
disquieteth himself in vain." 

99. And least of all, whatever may have been the 
eagerness of our passions, or the height of our pride, 
are we able to understand in its depth the third and 
most solemn character in which our life is like those 
clouds of heaven ; that to it belongs not only their 
transience, not only their mystery, but also their 
power ; that in the cloud of the human soul there is 
a fire stronger than the lightning, and a grace more 
precious than the rain ; and that though of the good 
and evil it shall one day be said alike, that the place 
that knew them knows them no more, there is an 
infinite separation between those whose brief presence 
had there been a blessing, like the mist of Eden that 
went up from the earth to water the garden, and those 
whose place knew them only as a drifting and change- 
ful shade, of whom the heavenly sentence is, that 
they are ' ' wells without water ; clouds that are carried 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 145 

with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is 
reserved for ever? " 

100. To those among us, however, who have lived 
long enough to form some just estimate of the rate 
of the changes which are, hour by hour in accelerat- 
ing catastrophe, manifesting themselves in the laws, 
the arts, and the creeds of men, it seems to me, that 
now at least, if never at any former time, the thoughts 
of the true nature of our life, and of its powers and 
responsibihties, should present themselves with abso- 
lute sadness and sternness. 

And although I know that this feeling is much 
deepened in my own mind by disappointment, which, 
by chance, has attended the greater number of my 
cherished purposes, I do not for that reason distrust 
the feeling itself, though I am on my guard against 
an exaggerated degree of it : nay, I rather believe 
that in periods of new effort and violent change, dis- 
appointment is a wholesome medicine ; and that in 
the secret of it, as in the twilight so beloved by 
Titian, we may see the colors of things with deeper 
truth than in the most dazzling sunshine. And 
because these truths about the works of men, which 
I want to bring to-day before you, are most of them 
sad ones, though at the same time helpful ; and be- 
cause also I believe that your kind Irish hearts will 
answer more gladly to the truthful expression of a 
personal feeling, than to the exposition of an abstract 
principle, I will permit myself so much unreserved 
speaking of my own causes of regret, as may enable 
you to make just allowance for what, according to 
your sympathies, you will call either the bitterness, 



146 SESAME AND LILIES. 

or the insight, of a mind which has surrendered its 
best hopes, and been foiled in its favorite aims. 

loi. I spent the ten strongest years of my life, 
(from twenty to thirty,) in endeavoring to show the 
excellence of the work of the man whom I believed, 
and rightly believed, to be the greatest painter of the 
schools of England since Reynolds. I had then per- 
fect faith in the power of every great truth or beauty 
to prevail ultimately, and take its right place in use- 
fulness and honor ; and I strove to bring the painter^s 
work into this due place, while the painter was yet 
alive. But he knew, better than I, the uselessness 
of talking about what people could not see for them- 
selves. He always discouraged me scornfully, even 
when he thanked me — and he died before even the 
superficial effect of my work was visible. I went on, 
however, thinking I could at least be of use to the 
public, if not to him, in proving his power. My 
books got talked about a little. The prices of mod- 
ern pictures, generally, rose, and I was beginning to 
take some pleasure in a sense of gradual victory, 
when, fortunately or unfortunately, an opportunity of 
perfect trial undeceived me at once, and for ever. 
The Trustees of the National Gallery commissioned 
me to arrange the Turner drawings there, and per- 
mitted me to prepare three hundred examples of his 
studies from nature, for exhibition at Kensington. 
At Kensington they were and are, placed for exhibi- 
tion ; but they are not exhibited, for the room in 
which they hang is always empty. 

102. Well — this showed me at once, that those 
ten years of my life had been, in their chief purpose, 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 147 

lost. For that, I did not so much care ; I had, at 
least, learned my own business thoroughly, and 
should be able, as I fondly supposed, after such a 
lesson, now to use my knowledge with better effect. 
But what 1 did care for, was the — to me frightful 
— discovery, that the most splendid genius in the 
arts might be permitted by Providence to labor and 
perish uselessly ; that in the very fineness of it there 
might be something rendering it invisible to ordinary 
eyes ; but, that with this strange excellence, faults 
might be mingled which would be as deadly as its 
virtues were vain ; that the glory of it was perisha- 
ble, as well as invisible, and the gift and grace of it 
might be to us, as snow in summer, and as rain in 
harvest. 

103. That was the first mystery of life to me. 
But, while my best energy was given to the study of 
painting, I had put collateral effort, more prudent, if 
less enthusiastic, into that of architecture ; and in 
this I could not complain of meeting with no sympa- 
thy. Among several personal reasons which caused 
me to desire that I might give this, my closing lec- 
ture on the subject of art here, in Ireland, one of the 
chief was, that in reading it, I should stand near the 
beautiful building, — the engineers' school of your 
college, — which was the first realization I had the 
joy to see, of the principles I had, until then, been 
endeavoring to teach ; but which alas, is now, to me, 
no more than the richly canopied monument of one 
of the most earnest souls that ever gave itself to the 
arts, and one of my truest and most loving friends, 
Benjamin Woodward. Nor was it here in Ireland 



148 SESAME AND LILIES. 

only that I received the help of Irish sympathy and 
genius. When, to another friend, Sir Thomas 
Deane, with Mr. Woodward, was intrusted the build- 
ing of the museum at Oxford, the best details of the 
work were executed by sculptors who had been born 
and trained here ; and the first window of the facade 
of the building, in which was inaugurated the study 
of natural science in England, in true fellowship with 
literature, was carved from my design by an Irish 
sculptor. 

104. You may perhaps think that no man ought to 
speak of disappointment, to whom, even in one 
branch of labor, so much success was granted. Had 
Mr. Woodward now been beside me, I had not so 
spoken ; but his gentle and passionate spirit was cut 
off from the fulfilment of its purposes, and the work 
we did together is now become vain. It may not be 
so in future ; but the architecture we endeavored to 
introduce is inconsistent alike with the reckless lux- 
ury, the deforming mechanism, and the squalid mis- 
ery of modern cities ; among the formative fashions 
of the day, aided, especially in England, by eccle- 
siastical sentiment, it indeed obtained notoriety ; and 
sometimes behind an engine furnace, or a railroad 
bank, you may detect the pathetic discord of its 
momentary grace, and, with toil, decipher its floral 
carvings choked with soot. I felt answerable to the 
schools 1 loved, only for their injury. I perceived 
that this new portion of my strength had also been 
spent in vain ; and from amidst streets of iron, and 
palaces of crystal, shrank back at last to the carving 
of the mountain and color of the flower. 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 149 

105. And still I could tell of failure, and failure 
repeated, as years went on ; but I have trespassed 
enough on your patience to show you, in part, the 
causes of my discouragement. Now let me more 
deliberately tell you its results. You know there is a 
tendency in the minds of many men, when they are 
heavily disappointed in the main purposes of their 
life, to feel, and perhaps in warning, perhaps in 
mockery, to declare, that life itself is a vanity. Be- 
cause it has disappointed them, they think its nature 
is of disappointment always, or at best, of pleasure 
that can be grasped by imagination only ; that the 
cloud of it has no strength nor fire within ; but is a 
painted cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. 
You know how beautifully Pope has expressed this 
particular phase of thought : — 

"Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays, 
These painted clouds that beautify our days ; 
Each want of happiness by hope supplied, 
And each vacuity of sense, by pride. 

Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy ; 
In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy. 
One pleasure past, another still we gain, 
And not a vanity is given in vain." 

But the effect of failure upon my own mind has 
been just the reverse of this. The more that my life 
disappointed me, the more solemn and wonderful it 
became to me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope^s say- 
ing, that the vanity of it was indeed given in vain ; but 
that there was something behind the veil of it, which 
was not vanity. It became to me not a painted cloud, 



ISO SESAME AND LILIES. 

but a terrible and impenetrable one : not a mirage, 
which vanished as I drew near, but a pillar of dark- 
ness, to which I was forbidden to draw near. For I 
saw that both my own failure, and such success in 
petty things as in its poor triumph seemed to me 
worse than failure, came from the want of sufficiently 
earnest effort to understand the whole law and mean- 
ing of existence, and to bring it to noble and due 
end ; as, on the other hand, I saw more and more 
clearly that all enduring success in the arts, or in any 
other occupation, had come from the ruling of lower 
purposes, not by a conviction of their nothingness, 
but by a solemn faith in the advancing power of 
human nature, or in the promise, however dimly ap- 
prehended, thai the mortal part of it would one day 
be swallowed up in immortality; and that, indeed, 
the arts themselves never had reached any vital 
strength or honor but in the effort to proclaim this 
immortality, and in the service either of great and just 
religion, or of some unselfish patriotism, and law of 
such national life as must be the foundation of reli- 
gion. 

io6. Nothing that I have ever said is more true or 
necessary — nothing has been more misunderstood or 
misapplied — than my strong assertion, that the arts 
can never be right themselves, unless their motive is 
right. It is misunderstood this way: weak painters, 
who have never learned their business, and cannot 
lay a true line, continually come to me, crying out — 
*' Look at this picture of mine; it imist be good, T 
had such a lovely motive. I have put my whole 
heart into it, and taken years to think over its treat- 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 151 

ment." Well, the only answer for these people is — 
if one had the cruelty to make it — *' Sir, you cannot 
think over auythmg in any number of years, — you 
haven't the head to do it ; and though you had fine 
motives, strong enough to make you burn yourself in 
a slow fire, if only first you could paint a picture, you 
can't paint one, nor half an inch of one ; you haven't 
the hand to do it." 

But, far more decisively we have to say to the men 
who {^0 know their business, or may know it if they 
choose — " Sir, you have this gift, and a mighty one ; 
see that you serve your nation faithfully with it. It 
is a greater trust than ships and armies : you might 
cast l/ie/n away, if you were their captain, with less 
treason to your people than in casting your own glori- 
ous power away, and serving the devil with it instead 
of men. Ships and armies you may replace if they 
are lost, but a great intellect, once abused, is a curse 
to the earth for ever." 

107. This, then, I meant by saying that the arts 
must have noble motive. This also I said respecting 
them, that they never had prospered, nor could pros- 
per, but when they had such true purpose, and were 
devoted to the proclamation of divine truth or law. 
And yet I saw also that they had always failed in this 
proclamation — that poetry and sculpture, and paint- 
ting, though only great when they strove to teach us 
something about the gods, never had taught us any- 
thing trustworthy about the gods, but had always be- 
trayed their trust in the crisis of it, and, with their 
powers at the full reach, became ministers to pride 
and to lust. And I felt also, with increasing amaze- 



152 SESAME AND LILIES. 

ment, the unconquerable apathy in ourselves the 
hearers, no less than in these th« teachers ; and that, 
while the wisdom and rightness of every act and art 
of life could only be consistent with a right under- 
standing of the ends of life, Ave were all plunged as in 
a languid dream — our heart fat, and our eyes heavy, 
and our ears closed, lest the inspiration of hand or 
voice should reach us — lest we should see with our 
eyes, and understand with our hearts, and be healed. 
108. This intense apathy in all of us is the first 
great mystery of life ; it stands in the way of every 
perception, every virtue. There is no making our- 
selves feel enough astonishment at it. That the occu- 
pations or pastimes of life should have no motive, is 
understandable ; but — That life itself should have no 
motive — that we neither care to find out what it may 
lead to, nor to guard against its being forever taken 
away from us — here is a mystery indeed. For, just 
suppose I were able to call at this moment to any one 
in this audience by name, and to tell him positively 
that I knew a large estate had been lately left to him 
on some curious conditions ; but that, though I knew 
it was large, I did not know how large, nor even 
where it was — whether in the East Indies or the 
West, or in England, or at the Antipodes. I only 
knew it was a vast estate, and that there was a chance 
of his losing it altogether if he did not soon find out 
on what terms it had been left to him. Suppose I 
were able to say this positively to any single man in 
this audience, and he knew that I did not speak 
without warrant, do you think that he would rest 
content with that vague knowledge, if it were anywise 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 153 

possible to obtain more? Would he not give every 
energy to find some trace of the facts, and never rest 
till he had ascertained where this place was, and what 
it was like? And suppose he were a young man, and 
all he could discover by his best endeavor was, that 
the estate was never to be his at all, unless he per- 
severed, during certain years of probation, in an 
orderly and industrious life ; but that, according to 
the rightness of his conduct, the portion of the estate 
assigned to him would be greater or less, so that it 
literally depended on his behavior from day to day 
whether he got ten thousand a year, or thirty thou- 
sand a year, or nothing whatever — would you not 
think it strange if the youth never troubled himself 
to satisfy the conditions in any way, nor even to 
know what was required of him, but lived exactly as 
he chose, and never inquired whether his chances of 
the estate were increasing or passing away? Well, 
you know that this is actually and literally so with 
the greater number of the educated persons now 
livmg in Christian countries. Nearly every man and 
woman, in any company such as this, outwardly 
professes to believe — and a large number unques- 
tionably think they believe — much more than this ; 
not only that a quite unlimited estate is in prospect 
for them if they please the Holder of it, but that the 
infinite contrary of such a possession — an estate of 
perpetual misery, is in store for them if they displease 
this great Land-Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. 
And yet there is not one in a thousand of these 
human souls that cares to think, for ten minutes 
of the day, where this estate is, or how beautiful it 



IS4 SESAME AND LILIES, 

is, or what kind of life they are to lead in it, or what 
kind of life they must lead to obtain it. 

109. You fancy that you care to know this : so 
little do you care that, probably, at this moment 
many of you are displeased with me for talking of the 
matter ! You came to hear about the Art of this 
world, not about the Life of the next, and you are 
provoked with me for talking of what you can hear 
any Sunday in church. But do not be afraid. I 
will tell you something before you go about pictures, 
and carvings, and pottery, and what else you would 
like better to hear of than the other world. Nay, 
perhaps you say, " We want you to talk of pictures 
and pottery, because we are sure that you know some- 
thing of them, and you know nothing of the other 
world." Well — I don't. That is quite true. But 
the very strangeness and mystery of which I urge you 
to take notice is in this — that I do not ; — nor you 
either. Can you answer a single bold question un- 
flinchingly about that other world — Are you sure 
there is a heaven ? Sure there is a hell ? Sure that 
men are dropping before your faces through the 
pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or sure 
that they are not ? Sure that at your own death you 
are going to be delivered from all sorrow, to be en- 
dowed with all virtue, to be gifted with all felicity, 
and raised into perpetual companionship with a King, 
compared to whom the kings of the earth are as 
grasshoppers, and the nations as the dust of His 
feet? Are you sure of this? or, if not sure, do any of 
us so much as care to make it sure? and, if not, how 
can anything that we do be right — how can any- 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 155 

thing we think be wise ; what honor can there be in 
the arts that amuse us, or what profit in the pos- 
sessions that please ? 

Is not this a mystery of life? 

no. But farther, you may perhaps think it a 
beneficent ordinance for the generality of men that 
they do not, with earnestness or anxiety, dwell on 
such questions of the future ; because the business of 
the day could not be done if this kind of thought 
were taken by all of us for the morrow. Be it so : 
but at least we might anticipate that the greatest and 
wisest of us, who were evidently the appointed 
teachers of the rest, w^ould set themselves apart to 
seek out whatever could be surely known of the 
future destinies of their race ; and to teach this in no 
rhetorical or ambiguous manner, but in the plainest 
and most severely earnest words. 

Now, the highest representatives of men who have 
thus endeavored, during the Christian era, to search 
out these deep things, and relate them, are Dante 
and Milton. There are none who for earnestness of 
thought, for mastery of word, can be classed with 
these. I am not at present, mind you, speaking of 
persons set apart in any priestly or pastoral office, to 
deliver creeds to us, or doctrines ; but of men who 
try. to discover and set forth, as far as by human 
intellect is possible, the facts of the other world. 
Divines may perhaps teach us how to arrive there, 
but only these two poets have in any powerful manner 
striven to discover, or in any definite words pro- 
fessed to tell, what we shall see and become there : 
or how those upper and nether worlds are, and have 
been, inhabited. 



IS6 SESAME AND LILIES. 

111. And what have they told us? Milton's 
account of the most important event in his whole 
system of the universe, the fall of the angels, is evi- 
dently unbelievable to himself; and the more so, that 
it is wholly founded on, and in a great part spoiled 
and degraded from, Hesiod^s account of the decisive 
war of the younger gods with the Titans. The rest 
of his poem is a picturesque drama, in which every 
artifice of invention is visibly and consciously em- 
ployed, not a single fact being, for an instant, con- 
ceived as tenable by any living faith. Dante^s 
conception is far more intense, and, by himself, for 
the time, not to be escaped from ; it is indeed a 
vision, but a vision only, and that one of the wildest 
that ever entranced a soul — a dream in which every 
grotesque type or fantasy of heathen tradition is 
renewed, and adorned ; and the destinies of the 
Christian Church, under their most sacred symbols, 
become literally subordinate to the praise, and are 
only to be understood by the aid, of one dear Floren- 
tine maiden. 

112. I tell you truly that, as I strive more with 
this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake 
to the meaning and power of life, it seems daily more 
amazing to me that men such as these should dare to 
play with the most precious truths, (or the most 
deadly untruths,) by which the whole human race 
listening to them could be informed, or deceived ; — 
all the world their audiences forever, with pleased ear, 
and passionate heart; — and yet, to this submissive 
infinitude of souls, and evermore succeeding and 
succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS, 157 

do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes ; with 
pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of hell ; 
touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns ; 
and fill the openings of eternity, before which 
prophets have veiled their faces, and which angels 
desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic 
imagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in 
their lost mortal love. 

Is not this a mystery of life? 

113. But more. We have to remember that these 
two great teachers were both of them warped in their 
temper, and thwarted in their search for truth. They 
were men of intellectual war, unable, through dark- 
ness of controversy, or stress of personal grief, to 
discern where their own ambition modified their 
utterances of the moral law ; or their own agony 
mingled with their anger at its violation. But greater 
men than these have been — innocent-hearted — too 
great for contest. Men, like Homer and Shakespeare, 
of so unrecognized personality, that it disappears in 
future ages, and becomes ghostly, like the tradition 
of a lost heathen god. Men, therefore, to whose 
unoffended, uncondemning sight, the whole of human 
nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, with 
which they will not strive ; or in mournful and 
transitory strength, which they dare not praise. And 
all Pagan and Christian civilization thus becomes 
subject to them. It does not matter how little, or 
how much, any of us have read, either of Homer 
or Shakespeare ; everything round us, in substance, 
or in thought has been moulded by them. All Greek 
gentlemen were educated under Homer. All Roman 



158 SESAME AND LILIES. 

gentlemen, by Greek literature. All Italian, and 
French, and English gentlemen, by Roman literature, 
and by its principles. Of the scope of Shakespeare, 
I will say only, that the intellectual measure of every 
man since born, in the domains of creative thought, 
may be assigned to him, according to the degree in 
which he has been taught by Shakespeare. Well, 
what do these two men, centres of mortal intelligence, 
deliver to us of conviction respecting what it most 
behoves that intelligence to grasp? What is their 
hope; their crown of rejoicing? what manner of 
exhortation have they for us, or of rebuke? what lies 
next their own hearts, and dictates their undying 
words ? Have they any peace to promise to our unrest 
— any redemption to our misery? 

114. Take Homer first, and think if there is any 
sadder image of human fate than the great Homeric 
story. The main features in the character of Achilles 
are its intense desire of justice, and its tenderness of 
affection. And in that bitter song of the Iliad, this 
man, though aided continually by the wisest of the 
gods, and burning with the desire of justice in his 
heart, becomes yet, through ill-governed passion, the 
most unjust of men : and, full of the deepest tender- 
ness in his heart, becomes yet, through ill-governed 
passion, the most cruel of men. Intense alike in 
love and in friendship, he loses, first his mistress, 
and then his friend ; for the sake of the one, he 
surrenders to death the armies of his own land ; for 
the sake of the other, he surrenders all. Will a man 
lay down his life for his friend? Yea — even for his 
dead friend, this Achilles, though goddess-born, and 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 159 

goddess-taught, gives up his kingdom, his country, 
and his Hfe — casts alike the innocent and guilty, with 
himself, into one gulf of slaughter, and dies at last 
by the hand of the basest of his adversaries. 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

115. But what, then, is the message to us of our 
own poet, and searcher of hearts, after fifteen hun- 
dred years of Christian faith have been numbered 
over the graves of men? Are his words more cheer- 
ful than the heathen's — is his hope more near — his 
trust more sure — his reading of fate more happy? 
Ah, no ! He differs from the Heathen poet chiefly 
in this — that he recognizes, for deliverance, no gods 
nigh at hand ; and that, by petty chance — by 
momentary folly — by broken message — by fooPs 
tyranny — or traitor's snare, the strongest and most 
righteous are brought to their ruin, and perish with- 
out word of hope. He indeed, as part of his render- 
ing of character, ascribes the power and modesty of 
habitual devotion, to the gentle and the just. The 
death-bed of Katharine is bright with vision of 
angels ; and the great soldier-king, standing by his 
few dead, acknowledges the presence* of the hand 
that can save alike by many or by few. But observe 
that from those who with deepest spirit, meditate, 
and with deepest passion, mourn, there are no such 
words as these ; nor in their hearts are any such 
consolations. Instead of the perpetual sense of the 
helpful presence of the Deity, wdiich, through all 
heathen tradition, is the source of heroic strength, in 
battle, in exile, and in the valley of the shadow of 
death, we find only in the great Christian poet, the 



i6o SESAME AND LILIES. 

consciousness of a moral law, through which **the 
gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instru- 
ments to scourge us ; " and of the resolved arbitration 
of the destinies, that conclude into precision of doom 
what we feebly and blindly began ; and force us, 
when our indiscretion serves us, and our deepest 
plots do pall, to the confession, that ** there's a 
divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how 
we will." 

Is not this a mystery of life ? 

ii6. Be it so then. About this human life that is 
to be, or that is, the wise religious men tell us noth- 
ing that we can trust ; and the wise contemplative 
men, nothing that can give us peace. But there is 
yet a third class, to whom we may turn — the wise 
practical men. We have sat at the feet of the poets 
who sang of heaven, and they have told us their 
dreams. We have listened to the poets who sang of 
earth, and they have chanted to us dirges, and words 
of despair. But there is one class of men more : — 
men, not capable of vision, nor sensitive to sorrow, 
but firm of purpose — practised in business ; learned 
in all that can be, (by handling, — ) known. Men, 
whose hearts and hopes are wholly in this present 
world, from whom, therefore, we may surely learn, at 
least, how, at present, conveniently to live in it. 
What will they say to us, or show us by example? 
These kings — these councillors — these statesmen 
and builders of kingdoms — these capitalists and 
men of business, who weigh the earth, and the dust 
of it, in a balance. They know the world, surely; 
and what is the mystery of life to us, is none to 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. i6i 

them. They can surely show us how to live, while we 
live, and to gather out of the present world what is 
best. 

117. I think I can best tell you their answer, by 
telling you a dream I had once. For though I am 
no poet, I have dreams sometimes : — I dreamed I 
was at a child's May-day party, in which every means 
of entertainment had been provided for them, by a 
wise and kind host. It was in a stately house, with 
beautiful gardens attached to it ; and the children had 
been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no care 
whatever but how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. 
They did not, indeed, know much about what was to 
happen next day ; and some of them, I thought, 
were a little frightened, because there was a chance 
of their being sent to a new school where there were 
examinations ; but they kept the thoughts of that out 
of their heads as well as they could, and resolved to 
enjoy themselves. The house, I said, was in a beau- 
tiful garden, and in the garden were all kinds of 
flowers ; sweet grassy banks for rest ; and smooth 
lawns for play ; and pleasant streams and woods ; and 
rocky places for climbing. And the children were 
happy for a little while, but presently they separated 
themselves into parties ; and then each party declared, 
it would have a piece of the garden for its own, and 
that none of the others should have anything to do 
with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently, 
which pieces they would have ; and at last the boys 
took up the thing, as boys should do, "practically," 
and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a 
flower left standing ; then they tram.pled down each 



i62 SESAME AND LILIES. 

other^s bits of the garden out of spite ; and the girls 
cried till they could cry no more ; and so they all lay 
down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited for 
the time when they were to be taken home in the 
evening. 1 

Ii8. Meanwhile, the children in the house had 
been making themselves happy also in their manner. 
For them, there had been provided every kind of 
in-doors pleasure : there was music for them to dance 
to ; and the library was open, with all manner of 
amusing books ; and there was a museum, full of the 
most curious shells, and animals, and birds ; and 
there was a workshop, with lathes and carpenter's 
tools, for the ingenious boys ; and there were pretty 
fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress in; and there 
were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes ; and whatever 
toys a child could fancy ; and a table, in the dining- 
room, loaded with everything nice to eat. 

But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three 
of the more "practical" children, that they would 
like some of the brass-headed nails that studded the 
chairs ; and so they set to work to pull them out. 
Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking 
at shells, took a fancy to do the like ; and, in a little 
while, all the children, nearly, were spraining their 
fingers, in pulling out brass-headed nails. With all 
that they could pull out, they were not satisfied ; and 
then, everybody wanted some of somebody else's. 
And at last, the really practical and sensible ones 

1 I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended it to 
set forth the wisdom of men in war contending for kingdoms, and what 
follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, contending for wealth. 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 163 

declared, that nothing was of any real consequence, 
that afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed 
nails ; and that the books, and the cakes, and the 
microscopes, were of no use at all in themselves, but 
only, if they could be exchanged for nail-heads. And, 
at last, they began to fight for nail-heads, as the others 
fought for the bits of garden. Only here and there, 
a despised one shrank away into a corner, and tried 
to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst of the 
noise ; but all the practical ones thought of nothing 
else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon — even 
though they knew they would not be allowed to carry 
so much as one brass knob away with them. But no 
— it was — " who has most nails ? I have a hundred, 
and you have fifty ; or, I have a thousand and you 
have two. I must have as many as you before I leave 
the house, or I cannot possibly go home in peace." 
At last, they made so much noise that 1 awoke, and 
thought to myself, ''What a false dream that is, of 
childreft.^'' The child is the father of the man; and 
wiser. Children never do such foolish things. Only 
men do. 

119. But there is yet one last class of persons to 
be interrogated. The wise religious men we have 
asked in vain ; the wise contemplative men, in vain ; 
the wise worldly men, in vain. But there is another 
group yet. In the midst of this vanity of empty 
religion — of tragic contemplation — of wrathful and 
wretched ambition, and dispute for dust, there is 
yet one great group of persons, by whom all these 
disputers live — the persons, who have determined, or 
have had it by a beneficent Providence determined for 



164 SESAME AND LILIES. 

them, that they will do something useful ; that what- 
ever may be prepared for them hereafter, or happen 
to them here, they will, at least, deserve the food 
that God gives them by winning it honorably ; and 
that, however fallen from the purity, or far from the 
peace, of Eden, they will carry out the duty of 
human dominion, though they have lost its fehcity ; 
and dress and keep the wilderness, though they no 
more can dress or keep the garden. 

These, — hewers of wood, and drawers of water — 
these bent under burdens, or torn of scourges — 
these, that dig and weave — that plant and build ; 
workers in wood, and in marble, and in iron — by 
whom all food, clothing, habitation, furniture, and 
means of delight are produced, for themselves, and 
for all men beside ; men, whose deeds are good, 
though their words may be few ; men, whose lives 
are serviceable, be they never so short, and worthy 
of honor, be they never so humble ; — from these, 
surely at least, we may receive some clear message of 
teaching; and pierce, for an instant, into the mys- 
tery of life, and of its arts. 

120. Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a 
lesson. But I grieve to say, or rather — for that is 
the deeper truth of the matter — 1 rejoice to say — 
this message of theirs can only be received by join- 
ing them — not by thinking about them. 

You sent for me to talk to you of art ; and I have 
obeyed you in coming. But the main thing I have 
to tell you is, — that art must not be talked about. 
The fact that there is talk about it at all, signifies 
that it is ill done, or cannot be done. No true painter 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 165 

ever speaks, or ever has spoken, much of his art. 
The greatest speak nothing. Even Reynolds is no 
exception, for he wrote of all that he could not him- 
self do, and was utterly silent respecting all that he 
himself did. 

The moment a man can really do his work, he 
becomes speechless about it. All words become idle 
to him — all theories. 

121. Does a bird need to theorize about building 
its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work 
is essentially done that way — without hesitation, 
without difficulty, without boasting ; and in the doers 
of the best, there is an inner and involuntary power 
which approximates literally to the instinct of an 
animal — nay, I am certain that in the most perfect 
human artists, reason does 7iot supersede instinct, 
but is added to an instinct as much more divine than 
that of the lower animals as the human body is 
more beautiful than theirs ; that a great singer sings 
not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with 
more — only rriore various, applicable, and govern- 
able ; that a great architect does not build with less 
instinct than the beaver or the bee, but with more — 
with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces 
all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that impro- 
vises all construction. But be that as it may — be the 
instinct less or more than that of inferior animals — 
like or unlike theirs, still the human art is dependent 
on that first, and then upon an amount of practice, 
of science, — and of imagination disciplined by 
thought, which the true possessor of it knows to be 
incommunicable, and the true critic of it, inexpli- 



1 66 SESAME AND LILIES. 

cable, except through long process of laborious 
years. That journey of lifers conquest, in which 
hills over hills, and Alps on Alps arose, and sank, — 
do you think you can make another trace it pain- 
lessly, by talking? Why, you cannot even carry us 
up an Alp, by talking. You can guide us up it, step 
by step, no otherwise — even so, best silently. You 
girls, who have been among the hills, know how the 
bad guide chatters and gesticulates, and it is **put 
your foot here," and "mind how you balance 
yourself there ; " but the good guide walks on 
quietly, without a word, only with his eyes on 
you when need is, and his arm like an iron bar, if 
need be. 

122. In that slow way, also, art can be taught — 
if you have faith in your guide, and will let his arm 
be to you as an iron bar when need is. But in what 
teacher of art have you such faith ? Certainly not in 
me ; for, as I told you at first, I know well enough it 
is only because you think I can talk, not because you 
think I know my business, that you let me speak 
to you at all. If I were to tell you anything that 
seemed to you strange, you would not believe it, and 
yet it would only be in telling you strange things 
that I could be of use to you. I could be of great 
use to you — infinite use, with brief saying, if you 
would believe it ; but you would not, just because 
the thing that would be of real use would displease 
you. You are all wild, for instance, with admiration 
of Gustave Dore. Well, suppose I were to tell you, 
in the strongest terms I could use, that Gustave 
Dore's art was bad — bad, not in weakness, — not in 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 167 

failure, — but bad with dreadful power — the power 
of the Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, 
and polluting ; that so long as you looked at it, no 
perception of pure or beautiful art was possible for 
you. Suppose I were to tell you that ! What would 
be the use ? Would you look at Gustave Dore less ? 
Rather, more, I fancy. On the other hand, I could 
soon put you into good humor with me, if I chose. 
I know well enough, what you like, and how to 
praise it to your better liking. I could talk to you 
about moonlight, and twilight, and spring flowers, 
and autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Raphael 

— how motherly ! and the Sibyls of Michael Angelo 

— how majestic! and the Saints of Angelico — how 
pious ! and the Cherubs of Correggio — how deli- 
cious ! Old as I am, I could play you a tune on the 
harp yet, that you would dance to. But neither you 
nor I should be a bit the better or wi«er ; or, if we 
were, our increased wisdom could be of no practical 
effect. For, indeed, the arts, as regards teachable- 
ness, differ from the sciences also in this, that their 
power is founded not merely on facts which can be 
communicated, but on dispositions which require to 
be created. Art is neither to be achieved by effort 
of thinking, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. 
It is the instinctive and necessary result of powers 
which can only be developed through the mind of 
successive generations, and which finally burst into 
life under social conditions as slow of growth as the 
faculties they regulate. Whole eras of mighty his- 
tory are summed, and the passions of dead myriads 
are concentrated, in the existence of a noble art 5 



1 68 SESAME AND LILIES. 

and if that noble art were among us, we should feel 
it and rejoice ; not caring in the least to hear lectures 
on it ; and since it is not among us, be assured we 
have to go back to the root of it, or, at least, to the 
place where the stock of it is yet alive, and the 
branches began to die. 

123. And now, may I have your pardon for point- 
ing out, partly with reference to matters which are at 
this time of greater moment than the arts — that 
if we undertook such recession to the vital germ of 
national arts that have decayed, we should find a 
more singular arrest of their power in Ireland than 
in any other European country. For in the eighth 
century, Ireland possessed a school of art in her 
manuscripts and sculpture, which, in many of its 
qualities — apparently in all essential qualities of 
decorative invention — was quite without rival ; seem- 
ing as if it mtght have advanced to the highest tri- 
umphs in architecture and in painting. But there 
was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was 
stayed, and stayed with a conspicuousness of pause 
to which there is no parallel : so that, long ago, in 
tracing the progress of European schools from 
infancy to strength, I chose for the students of 
Kensington, in a lecture since published, two char- 
acteristic examples of early art, of equal skill ; but 
in the one case, skill which was progressive — in the 
other, skill which was at pause. In the one case, it 
was work receptive of correction — hungry for cor- 
rection — and in the other, work which inherently 
rejected correction. I chose for them a corrigible 
Eve, and an incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 169 

say that the incorrigible Angel was also an Irish 
Angel ! ^ 

124. And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. 
In both pieces of art there was an equal falling short 
of the needs of fact ; but the Lombardic Eve knew 
she was in the wrong, and the Irish Angel thought 
himself all right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, 
though firmly insisting on his childish idea, yet 
showed in the irregular broken touches of the fea- 
tures, and the imperfect struggle for softer lines in the 
form, a perception of beauty and law that he could 
not render ; there was the strain of effort, under 
conscious imperfection, in every line. But the Irish 
missal-painter had drawn his angel with no sense of 
failure, in happy complacency, and put red dots into 
the palms of each hand, and rounded the eyes 
into perfect circles, and, I regret to say, left the 
mouth out altogether, with perfect satisfaction to 
himself. 

125. May I without offence ask you to consider 
whether this mode of arrest in ancient Irish art may 
not be indicative of points of character which even 
yet, in some measure, arrest your national power? 
I have seen much of Irish character, and have 
watched it closely, for I have also much loved it. 
And I think the form of failure to which it is most 
liable is this, that being generous-hearted, and 
wholly intending always to do right, it does not 
attend to the external laws of right, but thinks it 
must necessarily do right because it means to do so, 
and therefore does wrong without finding it out ; and 

^ See The Two Paths ^ P* 27. 



170 SESAME AND LILIES. 

then when the consequences of its wrong come upon 
it, or upon others connected with it, it cannot con- 
ceive that the wrong is in anywise of its causing or 
of its doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange agony 
of desire for justice, as feeUng itself wholly innocent, 
which leads it further astray, until there is nothing 
that it is not capable of doing with a good conscience. 

126. But mind, I do not mean to say that, in past 
or present relations between Ireland and England, 
you have been wiong, and we right. Far from that, 
I believe that in all great questions of principle, and 
in all details of administration of law, you have been 
usually right, and we wrong ; sometimes in misunder- 
standing you, sometimes in resolute iniquity to you. 
Nevertheless, in all disputes between states, though 
the strongest is nearly always mainly in the wrong, 
the weaker is often so in a minor degree ; and I 
think we sometimes admit the possibility of our being 
in error, and you never do. 

127. And now, returning to the broader question, 
what these arts and labors of life have to teach us of 
its mystery, this is the first of their lessons — that 
the more beautiful the art, the more it is essentially 
the work of people who feel themselves wrong; — who 
are striving for the fulfilment of a law, and the grasp 
of a loveliness, which they have not yet attained, 
which they feel even farther and farther from attain- 
ing, the more they strive for it. And yet, in still 
deeper sense, it is the work of people who know also 
that they are right. The very sense of inevitable 
error from their purpose marks the perfectness of 
that purpose, and the continued sense of failure arises 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 171 

from the continued opening of the eyes more clearly 
to all the sacredest laws of truth. 

128. This is one lesson. The second is a very 
plain, and greatly precious one, namely: — that 
whenever the arts and labors of life are fulfilled in 
this spirit of striving against misrule, and doing 
whatever we have to do, honorably and perfectly, 
they invariably bring happiness, as much as seems 
possible to the nature of man. In all other paths, 
by which that happiness is pursued, there is disap- 
pointment, or destruction : for ambition and for 
passion there is no rest — no fruition ; the fairest 
pleasures of youth perish in a darkness greater than 
their past light ; and the loftiest and purest love too 
often does but inflame the cloud of life with endless 
fire of pain. But, ascending from lowest to highest, 
through every scale of human industry, that industry 
worthily followed, gives peace. Ask the laborer in 
the field, at the forge, or in the mine ; ask the 
patient, delicate-fingered artisan, or the strong-armed, 
fiery-hearted worker in bronze, and in marble, and 
with the colors of light ; and none of these, who are 
true workmen, will ever tell you, that they have found 
the law of heaven an unkind one — that in the sweat 
of their face they should eat bread, till they return to 
the ground ; nor that they ever found it an unre- 
warded obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faith- 
fully to the command — ''Whatsoever thy hand 
findeth to do — do it with thy m.ight." 

129. These are the two great and constant lessons 
which our laborers teach us of the mystery of life. 
But there is another, and a sadder one, which they 



172 SESAME AND LILIES. 

cannot teach us, which we must read on their tomb- 
stones. 

"Do it with thy might." There have been myr- 
iads upon myriads of human creatures who have 
obeyed this law — who have put every breath and 
nerve of their being into its toil — who have devoted 
every hour, and exhausted every faculty — who have 
bequeathed their unaccomplished thoughts at death 
— who being dead, have yet spoken, by majesty of 
memory, and strength of example. And, at last, 
what has all this " Plight " of humanity accomplished, 
in six thousand years of labor and sorrow ? What 
has it dofie ? Take the three chief occupations and 
arts of men, one by one, and count their achieve- 
ments. Begin with the first — the lord of them all — 
agriculture. Six thousand years have passed since 
we were set to till the ground, from which we were 
taken. How much of it is tilled ? How much of 
that which is, wisely or well ? In the very centre 
and chief garden of Europe — where the two forms 
of parent Christianity have had their fortresses — 
where the noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, 
and the noble Protestants of the Vaudois valleys, 
have maintained, for dateless ages, their faiths and 
liberties — there the unchecked Alpine rivers yet run 
wild in devastation : and the marshes, which a few 
hundred men could redeem with a year's labor, still 
blast their helpless inhabitants into fevered idiotism. 
That is so, in the centre of Europe ! While, on the 
near coast of Africa, once the Garden of the Hes- 
perides, an Arab woman, but a few sunsets since, ate 
her child, for famine. And, with all the treasures of 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 173 

the East at our feet, we, in our own dominion, could 
not find a few grains of rice, for a people that asked 
of us no more ; but stood by, and saw five hundred 
thousand of them perish of hunger. 

130. Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, take 
the next head of human arts — weaving ; the art of 
queens, honored of all noble Heathen women, in the 
person of their virgin goddess — honored of all He- 
brew women, by the word of their wisest king — 
** She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands 
hold the distaff; she stretcheth out her hand to the 
poor. She is not afraid of the snow for her house- 
hold, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. 
She maketh herself covering of tapestry ; her clothing 
is silk and purple. She maketh fine linen, and selleth 
it, and delivereth girdles to the merchant." What 
have we done in all these thousands of years with 
this bright art of Greek maid and Christian matron ? 
Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned 
to weave ? Might not every naked wall have been 
purple with tapestry, and every feeble breast fenced 
with sweet colors from the cold ? What have we 
done ? Our fingers are too few, it seems, to twist 
together some poor covering for our bodies. We set 
our streams to work for us, and choke the air with 
fire, to turn our spinning-wheels — and, — are we yet 
clothed? Are not the streets of the capitals of 
Europe foul with sale of cast clouts and rotten rags ? 
Is not the beauty of your sweet children left in 
wretchedness of disgrace, while, with better honor, 
nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and 
the suckling of the wolf in her den ? And does not 



174 SESAME AND LILIES. 

every winter^s snow robe what you have not robed, 
and shroud what you have not shrouded ; and every 
winter's wind bear up to heaven its wasted souls, to 
witness against you hereafter, by the voice of their 
Christ, — "I was naked, and ye clothed me not ? " 

131. Lastly — take the Art of Building — the 
strongest — proudest — most orderly — most endur- 
ing of the arts of man ; that, of which the produce is 
in the surest manner accumulative, and need not 
perish, or be replaced ; but if once well done, will 
stand more strongly than the unbalanced rocks — 
more prevalently than the crumbling hills. The art 
which is associated with all civic pride and sacred 
principle; with which men record their power — sat- 
isfy their enthusiasm — make sure their defence — 
define and make dear their habitation. And, in 
six thousand years of building, what have we done ? 
Of the greater part of all that skill and strength, no 
vestige is left, but fallen stones, that encumber the 
fields and impede the streams. But, from this waste 
of disorder, and of time, and of rage, what is left to 
us ? Constructive and progressive creatures, that 
we are, with ruling brains, and forming hands, capa- 
ble of fellowship, and thirsting for fame, can we not 
contend, in comfort, with the insects of the forest, or 
in achievement, with the worm of the sea? The 
white surf rages in vain against the ramparts built by 
poor atoms of scarcely nascent life ; but only ridges 
of formless ruin mark the places where once dwelt 
our noblest multitudes. The ant and the moth have 
cells for each of their young, but our little ones lie in 
festering heaps, in homes that consume them like 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 175 

graves ; and night by night, from the corners of our 
streets, rises up the cry of the homeless — " I was a 
stranger, and ye took me not in." 

132. Must it be always thus? Is our life forever 
to be without profit — without possession ? Shall the 
strength of its generations be as barren as death ; or 
cast away their labor, as the wild figtree casts her 
untimely figs ? Is it all a dream then — the desire of 
the eyes and the pride of life — or, if it be, might we 
not live in nobler dream than this ? The poets and 
prophets, the wise men and the scribes, though they 
have told us nothing about a life to come, have told 
us much about the life that is now. They have had 
— they also, — their dreams, and we have laughed at 
them. They have dreamed of mercy, and of justice ; 
they have dreamed of peace and good-will ; they have 
dreamed of labor undisappointed, and of rest undis- 
turbed ; they have dreamed of fulness in harvest, and 
overflowing in store ; they have dreamed of wisdom 
in council, and of providence in law; of gladness of 
parents, and strength of children, and glory of gray 
hairs. And at these visions of theirs we have mocked, 
and held them for idle and vain, unreal and unaccom- 
plishable. What have we accomplished with our 
realities ? Is this what has come of our worldly wis- 
dom, tried against their folly? this, our mightiest 
possible, against their impotent ideal? or, have we 
only w^andered among the spectra of a baser felicity, 
and chased phantoms of the tombs, instead of visions 
of the Almighty ; and walked after the imaginations 
of our evil hearts, instead of after the counsels of 
Eternity, until our lives — not in the likeness of the 



176 ' SESAME AND LILIES, 

cloud of heaven, but of the smoke of hell — have be- 
come " as a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, 
and then vanisheth away?" 

1 33 . Does it vanish then ? Are you sure of that ? — 
sure, that the nothingness of the grave will be a rest 
from this troubled nothingness ; and that the coiling 
shadow, which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change 
into the smoke of the torment that ascends forever? 
Will any answer that they are sure of it, and that 
there is no fear, nor hope, nor desire, nor labor, 
whither they go? Be it so ; will you not, then, make 
as sure of the Life that now is, as you are of the 
Death that is to come? Your hearts are wholly in 
this world — will you not give them to it wisely, as 
well as perfectly? And see, first of all, that you have 
hearts, and sound hearts, too, to give. Because you 
have no heaven to look for, is that any reason that 
you should remain ignorant of this wonderful and 
infinite earth, which is firmly and instantly given you 
in possession? Although your days are numbered, 
and the following darkness sure, is it necessary that 
you should share the degradation of the brute, because 
you are condemned to its mortality ; or live the life of the 
moth, and of the worm* because you are to companion 
them in the dust? Not so; we may have but a few 
thousands of days to spend, perhaps hundreds only 
— perhaps, tens; nay, the longest of our time and 
best, looked back on, will be but as a moment, as the 
twinkling of an eye ; still, we are men, not insects ; 
we are living spirits, not passing clouds. " He maketh 
the winds His messengers ; the momentary fire, His 
minister ; " and shall we do less than these ? Let us 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 177 

do the work of men while we bear the form of them ; 
and, as we snatch our narrow portion of time out of 
Eternity, snatch also our narrow inheritance of passion 
out of Immortality — even though our lives be as a 
vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then van- 
isheth away. 

134. But there are some of you who believe not 
this — who think this cloud of life has no such close 
— that it is to float, revealed and illumined, upon the 
floor of heaven, in the day when He cometh with clouds, 
and every eye shall see Him. Some day, you believe, 
within these five, or ten, or twenty years, for every 
one of us the judgment will be set, and the books 
opened. If that be true, far more than that must be 
true. Is there but one day of judgment? Why, for 
us every day is a day of judgment — every day is a 
Dies Iras, and writes its irrevocable verdict in the 
flame of its West. Think you that judgment waits 
till the doors of the grave are opened? It waits at 
the doors of your houses — it waits at the corners of 
your streets ; we are in the midst of judgment — the 
insects that we crush are our judges — the moments 
we fret away are our judges — the elements that feed 
us, judge, as they minister — and the pleasures that 
deceive us, judge, as they indulge. Let us, for our 
lives, do the work of Men while we bear the Form of 
them, if indeed those lives are Not as a vapor, and do 
Not vanish away. 

135. *'The work of men" — and what is that? 
Well, we may any of us know very quickly, on the 
condition of being wholly ready to do it. But many 
of us are for the most part thinking, not of what we 



178 SESAME AND LILIES. 

are to do, but of what we are to get ; and the best of 
us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it is a mortal 
one — we want to keep back part of the price; and 
we continually talk of taking up our cross, as if the 
only harm in a cross was the weight of it — as if it 
was only a thing to be carried, instead of to be — 
crucified upon. *' They that are His have crucified 
the flesh, with the affections and lusts." Does that 
mean, think you, that in time of national distress, of 
religious trial, of crisis for every interest and hope of 
humanity — none of us will cease jesting, none cease 
idling, none put themselves to any wholesome work, 
none take so much as a tag of lace off their footmen's 
coats, to save the world? Or does it rather mean, 
that they are ready to leave houses, lands, and kin- 
dreds — yes, and life, if need be? Life! — some of 
us are ready enough to throw that away, joyless as 
we have made it. But " station in Life " — how many 
of us are ready to quit that? Is it not always the 
great objection, where there is question of finding 
something useful to do — " We cannot leave our sta- 
tions in Life? " 

Those of us who really cannot — that is to say, who 
can only maintain themselves by continuing in some 
business or salaried office, have already something to 
do ; and all that they have to see to, is that they do 
it honestly and with all their might. But with most 
people who use that apology, "remaining in the 
station of life to v/hich Providence has called them," ' 
means keeping all the carriages, and all the footmen 
and large houses they can possibly pay for ; and, once 
for all, I say that if ever Providence did put them into 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 179 

stations of that sort — which is not at all a matter of 
certainty — Providence is just now very distinctly call- 
ing them out again. Levi's station in life was the re- 
ceipt of custom ; and Peter's, the shore of Galilee ; and 
Paul's, the antechambers of the High Priest, — which 
*' station in life" each had to leave, with brief notice. 

And, whatever our station in life may be, at this 
crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil our duty ought, 
first, to live on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to 
do all the wholesome work for it we can, and to spend 
all we can spare in doing all the sure good we can. 

And sure good is first in feeding people, then in 
dressing people, then in lodging people, and lastly in 
rightly pleasing people, with arts, or sciences, or any 
other subject of thought. 

136. I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do 
not let yourselves be deceived by any of the common 
talk of " indiscriminate charity." The order to us is 
not to feed the deserving hungry, nor the industrious 
hungry, nor the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, 
but simply to feed the hungry. It is quite true, in- 
fallibly true, that if any man will not work, neither 
should he eat — think of that, and every time you sit 
down to your dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say sol- 
emnly, before you ask a blessing, " How much work 
have I done to-day for my dinner? " But the proper 
way to enforce that order on those below you, as 
well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and 
honest people to starve together, but very distinctly to 
discern and seize your vagabond ; and shut your vaga- 
bond up out of honest people's way, and very sternly 
then see that, until he has worked, he does not eat. 



i8o SESAME AND LILIES. 

But the first thing is to be sure you have the food to 
give ; and, therefore, to enforce the organization of 
vast activities in agriculture and in commerce, for 
the production of the wholesomest food, and proper 
storing and distribution of it, so that no famine shall 
any more be possible among civilized beings. There 
is plenty of work in this business alone, and at once, 
for any number of people who like to engage in it. 

137. Secondly, dressing people — that is to say, 
urging every one within reach of your influence to be 
always neat and clean, and giving them means of 
being so. In so far as they absolutely refuse, you 
must give up the effort with respect to them, only 
taking care that no children within your sphere of 
influence shall any more be brought up with such 
habits ; and that every person who is willing to dress 
with propriety shall have encouragement to do so. 
And the first absolutely necessary step towards this 
is the gradual adoption of a consistent dress for 
different ranks of persons, so that their rank shall be 
known by their dress ; and the restriction of the 
changes of fashion within certain limits. All which 
appears for the present quite impossible ; but it is 
only so far as even difficult as it is difficult to conquer 
our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear what we are 
not. And it is not, nor ever shall be, creed of mine, 
that these mean and shallow vices are unconquerable 
by Christian women. 

138. And then, thirdly, lodging people, which you 
may think should have been put first, but I put it third, 
because we must feed and clothe people where we 
find them, and lodge them afterwards. And pro- 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. i8i 

viding lodgment for them means a great deal of 
vigorous legislation, and cutting down of vested 
interests that stand in the way, and after that, or 
before that, so far as we can get it, thorough sanitary 
and remedial action in the houses that we have ; and 
then the building of more, strongly, beautifully, and 
in groups of limited extent, kept in proportion to 
their streams, and walled round, so that there maybe 
no festering and wretched suburb anywhere, but clean 
and busy street v/ithin, and the open country with- 
out, with a belt of beautiful garden and orchard roufld 
the walls, so that from any part of the city perfectly 
fresh air and grass, and sight of far horizon might be 
reachable in a few minutes' walk. This the final 
aim ; but in immediate action every minor and possi- 
ble good to be instantly done, when, and as, we 
can ; roofs mended that have holes in them — fences 
patched that have gaps in them — walls buttressed 
that totter — and floors propped that shake ; cleanli- 
ness and order enforced with our own hands and 
eyes, till we are breathless every day. And all the 
fine arts will healthily follow. I myself have washed 
a flight of stone stairs all down, with bucket and 
broom, in a Savoy inn, where they hadn't washed 
their stairs since they first went up them, and I 
never made a better sketch than that afternoon. 

139. These, then, are the three first needs of 
civilized life ; and the law for every Christian man 
and woman is, that they shall be in direct service 
towards one of these three needs, as far as is con- 
sistent with their own special occupation, and if they 
have no special business, then wholly in one of these 



l82 SESAME AND LILIES. 

services. And out of such exertion in plain duty all 
other good will come ; for in this direct contention 
with material evil, you will find out the real nature 
of all evil ; you will discern by the various kinds of 
resistance, what is really the fault and main an- 
tagonism to good ; also you will find the most un- 
expected helps and profound lessons given, and 
truths will come thus down to us which the specula- 
tion of all -our lives would never have raised us up to. 
You will find nearly every educational problem solved, 
as soon as you truly want to do something ; every- 
body will become of use in their own fittest way, and 
will learn what is best for them to know in that use. 
Competitive examination will then, and not till then, 
be wholesome, because it will be daily, and calm, 
and in practice ; and on these familiar arts, and 
minute, but certain and serviceable, knowledges, 
will be surely edified and sustained the greater arts 
and splendid theoretical sciences. 

140. But much more than this. On such holy and 
simple practice will be founded, indeed, at last, an 
infallible religion. The greatest of all the mysteries 
of life, and the most terrible, is the corruption of even 
the sincerest religion, which is not daily founded on 
rational, effective, humble, and helpful action. Help- 
ful action, observe ! for there is just one law, which 
obeyed, keeps all religions pure — forgotten, makes 
them all false. Whenever in any religious faith, 
dark or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon the 
points in which we differ from other people, we are 
wrong, and in the devil's power. That is the essence 
of the Pharisee's thanksgiving — " Lord, I thank thee 



MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS. 183 

that I am not as other men are." At every moment 
of our lives we should be trying to find out, not in 
what we differ from other people, but in what we 
agree with them ; and the moment we find we can 
agree as to anything that should be done, kind or 
good, (and who but fools couldn't?) then do it; push 
at it together; you can't quarrel in a side-by-side 
push ; but the moment that even the best men stop 
pushing, and begin talking, they mistake their pug- 
nacity for piety, and it's all over. I will not speak of 
the crimes which in past times have been committed in 
the name of Christ, nor of the follies which are at 
this hour held to be consistent with obedience to 
Him ; but I will speak of the morbid corruption and 
waste of vital power in religious sentiment, by which 
the pure strength of that which should be the guiding 
soul of every nation, the splendor of its youthful man- 
hood, and spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted 
or cast away. You may see continually girls who 
have never been taught to do a single useful thing 
thoroughly ; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who 
cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, 
whose whole life has been passed either in play or in 
pride ; you will find girls like these, when they are 
earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religi- 
ous spirit, which was meant by God to support them 
through the irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous 
and vain meditation over the meaning of the great 
Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be under- 
stood but through a deed ; all the instinctive wisdom 
and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the 
glory of their pure consciences warped into fruitless 



i84 SESAME AND LILIES. 

agony concerning questions which the laws of common 
serviceable life would have either solved for them in 
an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a 
girl any true work that will make her active in the 
dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness 
that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the better 
for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her en- 
thusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radi- 
ant and beneficent peace. 

So with our youths. We once taught them to 
make Latin verses, and called them educated ; now 
we teach them to leap and to row, to hit a ball with a 
bat, and call them educated. Can they plough, can 
they sow, can they plant at the right time, or build 
with a steady hand? Is it the effort of their lives to 
be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, lovely 
in word and deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay with 
many, and the strength of England is in them, and 
the hope ; but we have to turn their courage from the 
toil of war to the toil of mercy ; and their intellect 
from dispute of words to discernment of things ; and 
their knighthood from the errantry of adventure to 
the state and fidelity of a kingly power. And then, 
indeed, shall abide, for them and for us, an incor- 
ruptible felicity, and an infallible religion ; shall abide 
for us Faith, no more to be assailed by temptation, no 
more to be defended by wrath and by fear ; — shall abide 
with us Hope, no more to be quenched by the years 
that overwhelm, or made ashamed by the shadows 
that betray; — shall abide for us, and with us, the 
greatest of these ; the abiding will, the abiding name, 
of our Father. For the greatest of these, is Charity. 

THE END. 










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